Making a stir-fry dinner after a bath was not the best way to go about doing things. Chanyeol learnt that the hard way as the smell of fried vegetables aded the kitchen, possibly infiltrating every single one of his pores in the process. Deciding to do away with canned and instant food on his first day in a new house was also probably not a very good idea, he thought when a broccoli floret flew out of the impractically small wok and landed on a very unsavoury looking spot behind the rice cooker, where he doubted the three-second rule could apply. Regardless, it was a nice way to start off a turning point in his life – new food, new routines, new housemate, and a new living environment for both him and Kyungsoo, thanks to the pro tem ugly but cheap new tablecloths they had found tucked away in an obscure corner of the grocery store and the now empty master bedroom. All the house needed was a thorough cleaning and decorating job to become a home, and everything in the future would be shrouded in joy and nothing could possibly go wrong.

Or maybe he should take a step back and try to take each day as it came, Chanyeol thought, chuckling to himself. It was amusing how they were morphing into each other. He turned to look when he felt arms encircling his waist, his hand still mindlessly pushing the vegetables around in the wok, possibly losing a couple of snow peas in the process. Kyungsoo was apparently done cogitating after their odd conversation in the bathroom – or not, gauging by the faraway look on his face. Knowing him, he was probably inflating what he wanted to talk about into unmanageable proportions, hunting for hidden meanings behind a throwaway remark, or something along those lines. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

“Try this,” Chanyeol said, picking up a strip of capsicum with a pair of chopsticks and giving it two quick blows before offering it to Kyungsoo, who didn’t even spare it a glance.

“I have to tell you something.”

“Okay,” Chanyeol said, eating the snubbed capsicum himself. It was probably for the best; it was awfully bland. He looked through the assortment of herbs and spices aligned beside the stove, picking up a random unlabelled bottle and opening it to take a tentative sniff before adding a dash of it to the wok. “I’m listening.”

“You know what I said earlier about doing something a few months ago.”

Chanyeol nodded and picked up another bottle, crinkling his nose at the pungent smell of the herb inside it. What was this? Parsley? Oregano? Did any of those go with stir-fry vegetables? There was only one way to find out. He sprinkled it over the vegetables and gave everything in the wok a good stir.

“Well, it was-” Kyungsoo paused, tightening the hold he had around Chanyeol’s waist. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“Take your time,” Chanyeol mumbled absently, taking a sniff of the contents of the pot and frowning. He was pretty sure that wasn’t what stir-fry vegetables were supposed to smell like.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought and-” Kyungsoo halted when Chanyeol eased him aside to rifle through one of the overhead cupboards. He pulled away the arms he had around Chanyeol to self-consciously cross it over his midriff. “You’re not listening.”

“I am,” Chanyeol said, reaching for a small bottle of seasoned salt at the back of the cupboard. “You’ll be amazed at how well I can multitask.”

Kyungsoo seemed doubtful. “What did I say?”

“You’ve given what you did earlier a lot of thought,” Chanyeol repeated, pouring a generous amount of the seasoned salt into the wok.

“That’s not what I said at all.”

“It’s not?” Chanyeol asked, glancing at Kyungsoo before returning his eyes to the overcooked vegetables in the wok.

“I said I’ve given a lot of thought to how I should tell this to you, but I don’t think there’s a right time or way for me to say this.”

“Hang on,” Chanyeol said, trying to scrape some of the burnt onions off the bottom of the wok. The wok wasn’t just small; it was appallingly thin too, probably bought from a dollar store somewhere. “Give me a second to salvage this, and then you can have my undivided attention.”

“I’ll lose my nerve,” Kyungsoo said, a hint of agitation entering his voice.

Accidentally driving half the contents of the wok onto the stove in an effort to save the onions, Chanyeol swiftly decided to turn the electric stove off and turned around to face Kyungsoo. “Let’s order takeout later. What did you want to say?”

The smoke detector went off just as Kyungsoo opened his mouth.

“How do we quiet that down?” Chanyeol asked, giving the shrilly beeping smoke detector on the ceiling a glance. Getting sandwiches from the grocery store for lunch was a very good idea, he knew that now.

Kyungsoo stepped over to the wooden barstool beneath the smoke detector, clambered onto it, gave the smoke detector a twist to detach it from where it was mounted, and removed the battery.

“That worked,” Chanyeol commented at the sudden silence.

“I hurt someone.”

“Huh?” Chanyeol asked, watching as Kyungsoo got off the stool, refusing to meet his eyes.

“I hurt someone,” Kyungsoo repeated, back turned to Chanyeol as he placed the smoke detector and battery on the kitchen bench.

“Okay,” Chanyeol said slowly. “Is this part of your two-timing murderer double life?”

“No, I really did- I think I did. I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you hurt someone?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

Chanyeol paused, trying to decipher the situation. He wasn’t given much to work with. “Are they alright now?”

Kyungsoo hesitated before finally turning around and giving a slight shake of the head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Where do you think you should start?” Chanyeol asked, gesturing for Kyungsoo to sit on the barstool.

Kyungsoo slid onto the stool, a distant look on his face. “That fight in the cafeteria.”

It wasn’t exactly a fight, but Chanyeol nodded for Kyungsoo to go on with his story.

“After I left, I met up with- with a friend in class and I told him what happened, and I asked him if there was anything we could do on that day. We’ve talked about doing something fun together for months but never got around to it. So anyway, he said that he heard about this party that was happening that night. He said he wasn’t going to go, but if I wanted to then we could go together, and I said yes. He also said that he could set me up with someone he knew who’d be at the party if I finally decided to break things off with you.”

“I have a feeling I know who this friend is.”

“It’s not important. Anyway, we went to the party later that day. It was an outdoor event, and there were all sorts of people doing all sorts of things everywhere, and music blaring even though we were practically in a forest. It was bizarre. An out and out chaos.”

“Carmine Creek?” Chanyeol guessed.

Kyungsoo nodded. “Not on the mountain with the actual creek but in that area. At the foot of one of the lesser known mountains.”

“Who throws a party on a weekday smack bang in the middle of the semester though?”

“Does it matter?”

Chanyeol shook his head. “No, go ahead.”

“Somewhere along the way I managed to convince myself that I was a lot more pissed off at you than I should be, so I did a bunch of stupid things.”

“I didn’t take you for the reckless rage type.”

Kyungsoo sighed. “I was somehow trying to prove that there’s nothing wrong with me, that I’m just as capable of going out and having fun and being stupid as everybody else my age.”

“You know you don’t have to, right? There’s nothing wrong with taking yourself seriously.”

Kyungsoo looked at him. “You think I take myself too seriously?”

“I didn’t say too seriously. So what did you do at the party?”

There was a momentary pause before Kyungsoo continued his story. “All these random people were handing things to me, drinks and whatnot, and I took them because you only live once and all that jazz.”

Chanyeol stared at him, horrified. “For once, I actually wish you thought things through.”

“Obviously they didn’t give me water. I think there was more in it than just alcohol but I don’t know. You know how I get when I drink.”

The drunk Kyungsoo that he knew was definitely not capable of hurting anyone, but Chanyeol shelved that thought for later. “Was Tao with you the whole time?”

“No, I think we were separated early on,” Kyungsoo said, apparently not realizing that he had given away who his mystery friend was. “He might’ve kept his distance when I started drinking because he doesn’t like drunk people, but I don’t know. I have really hazy recollections of that night.”

“So what’s this about hurting someone?”

“I’m getting there. For a while, I was just walking around, mixing with strangers, and probably getting drunk out of my mind. I really can’t remember much, but I remember this girl. I think we kind of talked for a bit, and she said something, and we went off somewhere, and-” Kyungsoo halted and chewed on his lower lip before saying in a whisper, “It was horrible.”

“What was?”

There was a long stretch of silence before Kyungsoo’s face blanched, apparently recalling something horrific. “I just left her there.”

Chanyeol gave his shoulder a reassuring touch and, letting his curiosity get the better of him, asked, “What happened to her?”

“It doesn’t make sense that I remember any of this,” Kyungsoo said instead of answering the question. “I don’t remember most of that night. I don’t remember who she was or what she looked like. I don’t even remember how I got back or what happened after. I don’t know if it’s just my mind filling in the gaps and making things up, but I remember that feeling so well.”

“What feeling?”

“Like you’re standing on the edge of the abyss and you’re just hurling everything in: everything you own, everything that matters to you, everything that makes up parts of you, everything that you know, possess, admire, want, everything that has ever touched you, even if it was the slightest brush, because you know when you run out of things to feed it, you’ll be taking a headfirst plunge.”

Chanyeol paused, trying to assimilate what sounded to him like senseless drivel. “I’m not sure I know what you’re trying to say.”

Kyungsoo took a deep breath. “I think I killed her.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know what led up to it. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t even know how it happened. It might have been a rock, or a branch, or maybe it was the bottle in my hand. I don’t know. I don’t even know if she’s dead. I just left her there and now she’s a ing elephant and she’s worse than my father.”

“Hang on, slow down,” Chanyeol said, lowering the arm he had on Kyungsoo’s shoulder to his arm to give it a rub – hoping to rub some sense into him, Chanyeol’s subconscious snarked, but he quickly trampled it down. “Maybe that whole incident was a hallucination. If you actually did hurt or kill someone, wouldn’t the police have come knocking on your door months ago?”

“What if nobody knows? What if she doesn’t have family or friends or anybody who cares enough to know that she’s been hurt? Or worse, what if nobody found her? What if she’s still there, rotting in that mountain, who knows what gorging on her corpse after I left her to bleed out? God, what have I done?”

“Don't work yourself up, it’s probably nothing. Does she go to our uni? We can try to track her down.”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the other people at the party? Do they go to our uni?”

“I don’t know. Tao said they were friends of friends of random people or something.”

“Well, that’s a start,” Chanyeol said, giving Kyungsoo’s arm soothing pats. “You’ll be fine.”

Kyungsoo hesitated before meeting his eyes. “You’re okay with this?”

“Okay with what?”

“With me possibly having blood on my hands.”

“Of course I am,” Chanyeol said, chuckling despite the gravity of Kyungsoo’s tone. “It doesn’t even seem likely to me.”

“I’m not sure how I should feel.”

“Better?”

“I thought telling you about it would make me feel lighter but I feel the exact opposite. I feel like I’ve doubled the burden.”

“Don’t. We’ll figure this out together.”

Kyungsoo nodded. After a slight pause and seemingly out of nowhere, he said, “I love you too.”

Chanyeol eased him into a hug, partly because Kyungsoo looked like he needed one, and partly to hide the silly grin forming on his face in blatant disregard for the situation. Now all he had to do was figure out what it was that he said they were going to figure out.