3. INNER WARS

The police come to question him early in the morning, just like he had anticipated, but they mention nothing of the text message on his phone. 

When Doctor Zhang comes back to check up on him a half hour later, he cannot read those eyes or understand what they might be saying. He wants to ask why he isn't being hounded by authority figures for details which he is sure the doctor knows he can provide, but the man stays nonchalant and only smiles widely whenever Kyungsoo finds the balls to pry, so that his resolve falters and the question slips back down his throat.

"The stitches in your lip should still feel tender," Doctor Zhang says now, where they are left alone since Eun-seo has gone off to grab some breakfast for Kyungsoo, "but you'll be able to eat more easily now that they're starting to heal. I would still stick to softer foods for a while, at least until you feel more comfortable and have stopped taking the painkillers, but if you're very careful with how you eat then it should be okay."

Kyungsoo nods, but says nothing in response. He is uneasy around the man, mostly because he doesn't understand him nor figure out what it is he is thinking half the time, and it might be irrational, but when those tender eyes meet his own he feels as if they are boring straight into his soul.

"Your leg will take around six weeks to heal, so I'm afraid you'll have to use crutches for a while which we'll teach you how to use. After that you'll most likely be discharged - sometime in the afternoon I would think," Doctor Zhang says then, stepping back and checking the bag of fluid by Kyungsoo's bed. "I won't be here to do it myself though I'm afraid."

"Why not?" Kyungsoo blurts aloud, before he can stop himself. It is the first time where he has tried to prolong a conversation since the comment about the number yesterday, and, the doctor - who he is sure had noticed his closed-off behaviour - seems surprised.

The man gives him a short but calculated look which Kyungsoo can't understand. Kyungsoo suddenly feels like he's asked something which he shouldn't have. He thinks about taking it back, confused as to why he would even inquire about something to someone whom he should just be glad to be rid of in the first place, but the doctor does not seem offended, rather amused instead, even pleased.

"I don't work in the afternoons." He says eventually, tugging at the fluid bag one last time and turning back to Kyungsoo with a gentle smile on his face. "So I guess this is goodbye."

Kyungsoo doesn't really know how to respond to that, so he only mutters something unintelligible and gives a curt nod of his head, diverting to his cold temperament in a vain attempt to make the other forget about his slip-up with the question he hadn't meant to ask.

Doctor Zhang seems content with the response though, as he smiles even wider and his dimple appears just like it had done yesterday.

"Well," he says, finally stepping back, his lips still pulled up high, "I hope we will see each other again very soon," but then he cuts himself off with a short laugh, a simple sound but that which easily brightens the room. "Of course, not in these circumstances," he expands.

Kyungsoo is once again at a loss for what to say back, thrown off-guard like the doctor has made him many times before. He is unnerved by how easily this man can render him speechless.

"Please recover soon, Kyungsoo," the doctor says, smiling gently. "And remember to keep that number blocked."

It is the first time the doctor has brought up the text message, has let on that he knows of its existence, and Kyungsoo is shocked by its sudden acknowledgement. The elephant in the room has finally been granted attention, and Kyungsoo makes to look too but the doctor is gone just as quickly as the instruction had slipped from his lips.

Kyungsoo is too startled to call him back, and he spends the next hour or so trying to figure out whether or not he had imagined the whole exchange.

-

Kyungsoo is released from the hospital mid-afternoon, just as Doctor Zhang guessed, hobbling out on crutches which he has barely learnt to use and a few doses of painkillers in his sister's hold by his side. 

He does not talk as he is helped into the passenger seat and his sister goes around to start the car, but he can feel a pair of eyes glancing over at him every few seconds, even as they begin to turn out of the hospital car park.

"You should keep your eyes on the road," Kyungsoo says after a couple minutes have gone by and he can't ignore it any longer. He turns to look over to his sister, idly shuffling his crutches between his fingers. "Is there something you want to say?"

Her expression flickers ever so slightly and her jaw sets, as if she is trying to hold words back.

"Come on," Kyungsoo insists drably, "just tell me."

There is another short moment of silence where only the rumble of the car and the faint rushing of wind from outside can be heard, but then his sister releases a long sigh.

"Kyungsoo," she starts, "you know that you should've told the police the truth, right?"

Kyungsoo is expecting this and doesn't react, only continues to twist his crutches around each other as he waits for her to continue.

"Kyungsoo come on," she says, her tone more insistent, “it’s a dumb move to lie to the police. They could've helped you out or put a stop to it-"

"How?" Kyungsoo asks bitterly, turning to look to his sister. "How can they possibly help me, Eun-seo? What can they do?"

His sister falls silent and the expression on her face makes him feel guilty somehow, but they both know his words are true. 

Right now, there is no quick solution to this problem. He can't simply click his fingers and make it stop, nor can he just get someone else to do it for him. 

He might want to fight back, but he isn't so stupid as to assume it will be easy. This is four years, four years of his life in which this has become routine for him. Even though it has become more brutal in the space of just one week, even though he has never felt more scared than he does now, he knows that he has to try.

"We'll figure this out," Eun-seo says eventually, "we'll put a stop to this soon enough."

He doesn't have the energy to say anything different.

-

"I'll be fine," Kyungsoo assures for the umpteenth time, hobbling over to the sink to put down his empty glass of milk. "Stop worrying, would you? I can't afford to miss any more days of school as it is and you know that, so stop fretting over something that won't change."

He turns to his sister just as she opens to complain again, but he cuts her off with a chiding, "Eun-seo" and she stops talking immediately, though a pout is still clear on her face.

"Fine," she says grumpily, gathering up her own work books and picking her car keys from the rack. "But I'm still driving you to school," she calls out from the hallway. 

Kyungsoo opens his mouth to protest but his sister sticks her head out through the doorway, looking pointedly at his crutches as if daring him to go against her with a somewhat feral look in her eyes. He immediately straightens up, mumbling his consent and granting her a small, wobbly smile, and she stares at him a second longer before turning away with a chirpy, "come on!"

It is times like this where he marvels at how normal people can handle his sister's mercurial temperament.

Grumbling quietly under his breath, he crutches his way over to the shoe rack by the open front door, where his sister has already laid out his shoes for him along with a makeshift seat of the hall table. He chuckles lightly at how preposterous this whole situation is, where he has to seat himself on his parent's best mahogany furniture and lean down to scoop up his shoes in his hands in order to put them on. 

It seems strange to think how such an easy act could become so complex because of something as seemingly inconsequential as a hard kick to the leg.

Kyungsoo shakes his head slightly, still laughing quietly to himself at what is effectively nothing, and it is then - as he is leaning down with his frame gently shaking and his shoes a mere breath's width from his fingertips - that he sees it.

It's really a single word that captures his attention, for its not the sort of word you'd find on a flyer of any sort. 

Three Letters. Two consonants. A bare vowel and a single syllable which draws out quite nicely if you tried.

GAY.

GAY SUPPORT GROUP, it reads in full.

He takes a short moment to comprehend that, a short moment to let his eyes train over the details of the leaflet whilst his heart beats fast and hard in his chest, and then he reaches a tentative hand out and snatches the paper up to his chest, peering down at it with wide eyes and nostrils which are gently flared.

A long moment passes, then another, slightly more prolonged this time, and then-

Then he bursts out laughing - a loud, boisterous laugh which is rarely heard but which makes him smile wide and heart-shaped and has his eyes squinting into beautiful crescents. He shakes his head, chortling still, and could've probably stayed like that for hours, sat on that uncomfortable mahogany table with a cast around his leg and crutches sandwiched between his thighs, but his sister calls out to him asking if he's gone insane in the space of a minute and that if so could be please drag his crazy outside before they both become late.

Kyungsoo slips on his shoes as quickly as he can, turning to reach for his bag but grumbling to himself when he sees that his sister must've already taken it in for him, before awkwardly shimmying off the table and hobbling towards the door. 

It's only when he's reaching towards the handle to close it behind himself that he realises he is still holding the leaflet. 

He looks down at it again for a second, but then his sister calls out to him and he can hear her footsteps approaching, so he stuffs the leaflet in his blazer pocket - seconds before his sister's head pops around the door.

"Come on," she says, but then frowns. "Why do you look like that?" She asks eventually, staring at Kyungsoo's face.

"Look like what?" He questions, hobbling out the front door so his sister can lock up behind him.

"You know what I mean. Why do you look so guilty?"

Kyungsoo shrugs. "I don't."

"You do."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

"I seriously don't," Kyungsoo insists, turning around to send his sister a look. 

Eun-seo stops by the door for a second, expression thoughtful, but eventually she just gives up and walks towards the car - though her movements are still calculated and eyes still squinted in thought.

It's only once Kyungsoo is seated and she has settled down into her own seat, not having started driving just yet, that she stops for a second.

"Kyungsoo-"

"I don't!" He interrupts immediately, not looking up at his sister.

"I wasn't going to say that," Eun-seo responds calmly.

Kyungsoo turns her way, wide-eyed and slightly disbelieving, but then her expression turns serious.

"I was going to say to be careful," she says, and her tone is calculated, with a heaviness which shocks Kyungsoo into silence. "Please be careful, Kyungsoo."

-

It is lunchtime and nothing yet has happened. 

Kyungsoo had seen his bullies in period 2 and has been on edge since then, where he had felt a pair of eyes boring into the back of his head whilst he'd tried to focus on the lesson. He was surprised when they walked right past his desk without saying anything, surprised that they did not take advantage of his weakened state of being, but it might've simply been the teacher by his side, helping him pick up the papers he'd dropped when he'd panicked at their apparent approach.

Now he is hobbling over to the canteen in this edgy state, taking furtive glances back and around about every ten seconds - which he only realises to be a dumb move when he's swinging his body forwards on the crutches and collides straight into someone's chest.

He lets out a short, surprised squeak and his crutches falter slightly where he is standing, but two hands suddenly grip his shoulders steady and someone speaks out.

"Are you okay?" The person asks, and he looks up to see Lee Taemin, Jongin's best friend, with a small smile on his face and his head tilted to the side in muted worry.

"O-oh, I'm fine," Kyungsoo says, shuffling back and letting the hands on his shoulders drop. "Sorry. I wasn't looking where I was going."

Taemin laughs lightly. 

"It's okay," he assures, but then his expression falters and his eyes dart down to Kyungsoo's leg, and then up again to his lip, where the stitch marks are still clear there and have already garnered many side-eyed glances. 

He shrinks back slightly when he thinks Taemin will ask about what happened, but he is shocked by what he says instead.

"You're... Kyungsoo, right?" He asks slowly, carefully. "Do Kyungsoo?"

Kyungsoo blinks owlishly, startled by the question, but he nods nonetheless and Taemin's eyes are more searching when they trail over his body this time, where they stop at his eyes and his hair and the top of his head a little longer than the rest.

"Hmm," he says eventually, and then he breaks out into a huge smile, chuckling gently to himself. "I guess I'll see you around Kyungsoo," and he is gone before the shorter boy can even begin to fathom what just happened.

-

For the rest of the day Kyungsoo is too confused by that short and unexpected exchange to really think about his bullies, so it truly shocks him when the last bell rings and he crutches out to the front gates only to be cornered at the steps by the three people he had been dreading most to see.

"Hey, ," the leader says, taking a step forward and making Kyungsoo shrink back to where he is completely frozen, unprepared for this confrontation even though he has been expecting it for the whole day.

"Say," the leader says, tone sickeningly saccharine, "did you happen to get my text message?"

Kyungsoo remains silent, doesn't meet their eyes. It means yes.

The leader and his cronies snicker harshly, even more so when Kyungsoo flinches as they move in close, and Kyungsoo is so frustrated, so annoyed because he can't seem to move or speak or do anything still.

"Well..." the leader says, stepping forward once more so that his body looms over Kyungsoo. A hand reaches out and clamps onto Kyungsoo's chin, forcing him to look and making his heart beat even faster when he sees those feral eyes closer than he's ever seen them before.

"I hope that you will listen to it," the leader says, and then he tugs Kyungsoo's chin down harshly, the three of them stepping back and sauntering away as quickly as they appeared. 

It isn't rough nor violent and the words aren't particularly cruel or hateful, but Kyungsoo has never seen the three hold such a menacing threat over him as they had just then, never seen such a unification of power being flaunted his way; he doesn't know how to react to it.

It takes him a few minutes to gather himself, to realise that the place is deserted, that he has been standing alone as the few students still remaining slowly dispersed. He reaches into his pocket for his phone to call his sister to come pick him up, knowing that she would throttle him if he even attempted to walk home by himself, alone, like this.

His fingers curl around the cool surface of his phone and he makes to take it out, but there is this foreign material scraping against the back of his knuckles and he stops mid-motion. Curious, he twists his hand and tugs out the thing in his pocket.

It's the leaflet from this morning, he realises, crinkled around the edges now.

He guffaws to himself and is just about to walk over to the bin a few feet away from him to throw it away, but he falters before he moves and his stare turns very concentrated, gaze tracing over the letters imprinted on the leaflet in his hand.

GAY SUPPORT GROUP.

GAY SUPPORT GROUP.

The words strike him hard and his heart starts beating fast in his chest, a whisper of an idea forming in the back of his mind, a gently coaxing suggestion.

He shakes his head, letting out a shaky laugh and glancing around himself nervously.

"What are you thinking, idiot?" he mutters aloud, but another voice sounds immediately after, startling him, a quiet but firm: well, why not?

He stops moving, blinking furiously. 

It's stupid, he thinks back.

It's what you need, is the instantaneous response, it will help.

Kyungsoo shuffles around again, pressing down on each crutch conversely and staring at the leaflet in his hands with wary, unsure eyes.

He thinks of all that has happened in this past week or so.

He thinks of sickening white hospital walls and a resounding crack which he can’t forget, of gentle smiles and soothing words and then feral eyes whose fire never seems to simmer down. He thinks of the constant fretting when his sister came to visit him in the hospital, and of knowing eyes over menacing one’s, promises that he has made to himself but can’t seem to pull through and the distress his giving up would cause.

And then he thinks of the muted worry in his sister’s eyes, the tortured tone in her voice which she used when he was supposed to be asleep, and it’s more than enough, more than enough of a reason why.

He takes a deep, steadying breath, looking around himself again and seeing the emptiness around him, the still picture spread out over the school’s courtyard and a gentle rumbling of cars in the distance.

Before he can change his mind, before he can doubt this anymore, he takes out his phone and calls his sister, pressing it up with his shoulder and letting it ring as he searches the leaflet for what he needs.

Sessions: 16:30-18:00 every weekday

He checks his watch, slightly jolted by how long he has been standing there, but it is only a little past four o clock now and the place (he knows, as he has been there) can’t be more than a ten minute walk from here, probably double that with his crutches.

His phone finally connects and the, “’Want me to pick you up?” gets him to start moving.

“Actually Eun-seo,” he says, his voice almost breathy as he starts to hobble his way the opposite direction to his house, “could you pick me up a little later today…”

-

Kyungsoo reaches the place a little after half four, where he waits outside the building with wide and speculative eyes, awkwardly shifting his weight from crutch-to-crutch and supressing the urge to gnaw at his lip. His palms feel clammy around the handles in his grip and he thinks he might be shaking with wary nerves, but he still wobbles his way over to the ramp by the front steps and crutches onwards.

Somehow, he manages to get instructions of where to go by a sweet lady standing outside and it’s within minutes that he finds himself standing by clear double doors, where there is a big spacy hall and a circle of people gathered in the middle of it, their buzz of voices filtering through the gaps.

It’s only really at this point where he takes in what he is doing, what this actually would mean.

It’s okay when he talks to his sister, comfortable for most of the time though he still might have to withhold some information to cease her worrying, but strangers? It never crossed his mind that he would be getting help from a group of strangers and he isn’t sure that he can do it.

He thinks for another moment and then slowly, carefully, he pushes the door open and stops just there, neither in nor out, but now able to hear the tumble of voices in more detail, where what must be three conversations are going on all at once.

He catches words, names he thinks, snippets of an interaction which he cannot make sense of without context, and it is all so overwhelming, so unexpectedly boisterous, that he falters slightly where he stands.

A sharp gasp escapes his lips when he nearly presses down on his bad leg, but what startles him even more is how, when he looks up at the group once again, he meets with a pair of curious eyes, staring right at him, the first and only to acknowledge his presence.

He makes to move back and turn away before anyone else notices him, but then another head turns his way, the one facing perfectly away from his own position, and a familiar voice calls out to him so that he tenses in muted shock.

“Kyungsoo?”

-

A/N

lol cliffhanger.

***warning*** I have GCSEs in exactly a month which is like, meh, but my updates might be late for the next several weeks because I should probably revise haha...

But thanks for subscribing so far. I hope you babes like it. Please comment what you thought. :D