r o s e d u s t, chp 9
• c h a p t e r 9 •
The minutes passed and heartbeats slowed down, the adrenaline rush calming and Key was finally able to think clearly again.
He carried Hara out of the water and set her down where she slowly recovered from the shock, her eyes wet with water and tears. The car was parked behind them where he left it, and he was relieved he made that right decision to pull over close enough that he wouldn’t leave Hara’s side.
The engine was off and the key taken out of the ignition; the danger had subsided so he didn’t have to rush anymore. Hara was safe.
She was shivering from the cold, her hospital gown still soaked from head to toe. She refused to get in the car to warm up so Key didn’t force her, letting her sit there for as long as she needed, just gazing out at the river.
He quietly went to the car and took off his jacket, heavy with water, wringing it dry before tossing it into the backseat of the car. He fished his phone from his trouser pocket (wet but miraculously still working) and as he predicted, there were dozens of missed calls.
No doubt Taemin must have panicked after Key left so quickly, calling as many people as he could to figure out where he went, but all it ended up doing was causing chaos where they all tried to reach him at once. 58 missed calls, 35 messages, all of which were the same repeated questions. Where are you? Call me back. Pick up the phone, please. It was so careless of them; Key could almost smell the plastic of the phone overheating and the screen was flashing dysfunctionally with the battery now down to its last block.
He only had enough to make one call.
Key felt a pang of regret in his chest as he scrolled down the missed calls; he hadn’t called anyone yet, not his manager, not the police, not even Nicole. He hadn’t even the chance to think about it until now, he hadn’t even considered what was going to happen next.
They’d all coming running, wouldn’t they? The hospital, the managers, the media… they’d all be coming for Hara. Dread churned in the pit of Key’s stomach as he thought about it, and how he wasn’t sure if he even was prepared; all those people who would fawn over her, speaking in frantic loud voices that drowned out everything else, everything she had to say… she would suffocate. It all depended whether she’d be ready to handle it when they got back.
A storm was coming, and Key was the one who was going to drive her right into it. He had a headache just imagining their faces, because no matter how much he didn’t want that to be what was waiting for Hara, it was.
He shook his head wearily and turned the phone off, figuring it wiser to save the power and make his last call later. Even though he knew how worried Nicole was right now, he was sure she would understand later when he explained.
Key slipped the phone away and shot another glance at Hara over his shoulder. It had been about 20 minutes now, and she hadn’t said a single thing to him now that she calmed down, and he pondered whether or not to go over and talk. He was never the best person for this kind of thing, he couldn’t even bring himself to talk about his grief and allowed it to bubble and simmer inside him until he was ready to explode. He never trusted anyone else to really understand his pain even though they were going through it too. It had been so long since he’d had a decent conversation with someone without it resulting in an argument or him walking off, but he knew that he had to be that decent conversation for Hara. He wasn’t sure how to even start, but it only took a brief moment before he was bitterly reminded he was the only one here who could. He hated being the person who pushed, sometimes he’d push too hard that they’d fall and get hurt.
He rolled his eyes to dismiss the sentiments that came with his pity, pulling out an old blanket the manager kept in the trunk ever since winter arrived. It was a simple little thing, meant to be fought amongst the members while they waited in the freezing cold in the middle of traffic, though it was quickly abandoned as useless since it was so tiny.
Key found the lumpy thing lodged in the corner, covered in dust and stinking of stale gasoline and mold, but thankfully it was dry. He felt bad having to give Hara this, but there was nothing else since his clothes were wet and she needed to get warm. A part of him wanted so bad to scold her for being so stubborn to refuse staying in the car where there was a perfectly good heating system, but he begrudgingly held back his tongue for the sake of his own sanity. After a few shakes and pats he managed to clean it enough to make it look presentable, at least in his eyes, and he hugged it against his chest, the only spot on his body that was still dry, hoping it would absorb some of his warmth into it.
He took it over to where Hara sat, wrapping the blanket over her shoulders and tucking it in so she could get warm as quickly as possible. She sat so still he wouldn’t have expected her to even notice, but she hissed at the sudden brush of cotton and shrank almost instantly into its safety, clutching the corners and pulling it taut around herself. She blew out a thin stream of white smoke forcefully through her lips, and in an instant that brief glimpse of the vulnerable cold girl vanished, turning back into the marble statue who stared with empty yearning at the tide washing in and out, in and out, in and out…
It made Key curious, what must be running through her mind behind the mask of porcelain that covered up that anguish he saw just a few minutes ago, as if nothing happened. He drew closer tentatively to her side and crouched down, tilting his head to try to see her eyes that could never hide the emotions like the rest of her face could. But she was turned away from him, refusing him and his company.
Key immediately regretted the spot he’d chosen to sit on, the ground hard and grainy like salt under his palms. He winced and dusted his hands of the dry dirt and tiny jagged rocks, sighing with disdain at noting how much colder it was near the water than when he was simply standing up. He looked back at Hara again and pondered again out of habit if it was a bad idea not to just force her to go to the car with him since she must still be so cold. He could almost see the water drops turning to icicles on her hair, but other than that she didn’t look like she preferred anywhere else right now.
Here, it was like this haven away from the noise and chaos of the outside world, a perfect place to escape real life and listen to the sound of your own heart beating. In this place, the world had stopped spinning, and somehow they were allowed refuge in borrowed time where they could breathe and think.
Hiding away seemed cowardly and even a bit irresponsible in Key’s opinion, but Hara needed time, and right now he was the only one who could give it to her. It was really all he could do.
He wanted her to tell him herself when she was ready to go back.
The minutes passed and they sat there together for a long time, the world hushed for them except the gentle crashing tides and a faint whistling noise as the wind blew tauntingly through the reeds of the bank.
Key hugged his knees to his chest to keep himself warm, staring out at the pending sunset in the horizon. It was beautiful and almost hypnotic, but it didn’t affect Key. He couldn’t drown in that tranquility anymore like he used to, he couldn’t throw away his troubled mind and just forget everything that happened.
He was too cynical now to think of it as some miracle chance to let him rest to not be constantly worried or angry or bitter. He’d come so close to just letting himself break under all this pressure, it didn’t seem to mean much that it all fate could do now was delay it just a little longer. It was too late for anything else.
Key gave the provided peaceful atmosphere around him a few more minutes to see if he could somehow miraculously adapt to it, but after a while he couldn’t bring himself to let go of his thoughts. It was too quiet and too soon, his body was still bracing itself from a feeling in his bones telling him to be prepared. They were in the eye of the storm, nothing was as it seemed, and Hara could break again at any given time. She hadn’t shattered completely, not yet.
Key wondered to himself what Hara must be thinking about. He was always curious, though he never admitted it to himself, fascinated by how doll-like she became when she was so deeply absorbed in her daydreams. A porcelain face with a mannequin body, and eyes he sometimes caught not blinking for minutes, even hours.
She looked so eerily beautiful, so perfect that sometimes it frightened him.
He made up ridiculous theories to stop himself from worrying about her. What was there to worry about anyway? Hara had become so lost, what chances were she even remembered what blinking was like? Those times when she fell into one of her trances, so happy and ignorant of the real world, but as soon as she blinked, she’d wake up again in her empty little room by herself. Why would anyone in her position want to blink? She was so obsessed with holding onto her fantasy that she refused to blink, so her eyes watered. And when her eyes watered, tears would fall. That was what Key convinced himself to believe, that her tears weren’t because she was sad, but because she was insane with a body no longer hers to control. Maybe the weight of all self-denial eventually crushed the last bit of sanity she had left.
Key didn’t know if there would ever be a right time to ask her how much she remembered the accident, how many sleepless nights she had nightmares about it. He wondered just exactly how much it took to bring down that wall, reducing her to this state of mind. He regretted dismissing all those opportunities he could have taken to help her, when he selfishly kept away to protect his pride. God, he could’ve have helped her so much. It wouldn’t have come to this, she wouldn’t have suffered so much.
“It happened here, didn’t it?”
Key snapped out of his thoughts, surprised to hear Hara suddenly talk after such a long silence. He looked at her to find her still sitting motionlessly except her eyelashes fluttering slightly, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips when she felt his gaze on her.
“The accident,” she said meekly. She turned her head, and her eyes met with his for the first time. “It was here.”
She sounded different. The way she spoke, he couldn’t even remember the last time she sounded like this; so soft like she just woke up, torn abruptly out of a nightmare but still able to remember every detail about it. Now that he finally could look at those deep brown eyes, Key saw it, all the scars, all that collateral damage, bleeding out so much he couldn’t believe she could still be in one piece like this, still intact. Still alive.
Still his Hara.
Stunned, Key opened his mouth but nothing came out, a lump swelling in his throat and stopping any noise from coming out. It was ironic, waiting this long to have a real conversation with her, only to be caught completely off-guard by the fact that the chance had actually come at last. Hara smiled again, seeming to understand his silence. She brought up her hand from under the blanket, pale from the cold, pointing at the riverbank just in front of them.
“This-this was where we cr-crashed,” she said haltingly, her voice worn and tired. She swallowed and took another deep breath. “This is where he died, isn’t it?” She glanced over her shoulder wistfully at the railing, running her eyes down to where the collision ripped through it.
“Right here.” She bowed her hand, pressing her palm flat on the ground at her side. She dug her fingers shallowly into the patch of dirt, crunching through it with her fingernails.
Key felt heat rise in his cheeks, suddenly feeling so strange and uncomfortable, almost nauseated. Even after all he’d been through, it hurt to hear her talk normally, more than he thought he was prepared for.
Normally, he went against his judgment to expect her to relapse back into one of her hallucinations… but her voice, though it was clear and steady, there was this overwhelming sorrow that settled into her words so easily in ways he never heard before.
A gust of wind ripped through the silence, slicing into exposed skin and flaying up streaks of sand from the unmoving ground, and everything became ten times colder. The clouds moved, hovering over the last source of light and heat in the horizon as it slowly but gradually dissolving into shades of pink and orange, night awaiting to cloak the world in darkness.
Hara made a whimpering noise, suddenly looking frail and vulnerable, like she was only now reacting to the deathly chill. She lowered her head so Key couldn’t see her face anymore, letting out a humorless laugh that was hollow and filled with nothing but pain and self-loathing.
“He was still alive,” she chuckled mirthlessly.
She raised her head and Key saw her eyes shimmering with raw tears from saying his name, but she shuddered and wiped them away like they were burning her cheeks. The sudden visible break from her composure caught Key by surprise, even shocking him a little. Out of instinct, he moved closer, extending out his hand but then quickly drew it back again, unsure if he should touch her. She glanced at him again, and he saw how helpless, how human she looked. The cracks in the façade she had put up, that the dam holding back all the grief, it was going to burst right here, right now.
“Kibum, he was still talking to me.”
She hadn’t called him Kibum in ages, to the point where he stopped caring. Yet hearing it now, something in his stomach stirred, some shapeless thing that was going to fly into his throat and make him cry. But he wasn’t going to cry, not in front of her. But if he wasn’t going to cry, he couldn’t open his mouth. He couldn’t tell her to stop, so she didn’t stop.
“He was holding my hand,” she went on, not seeming to have noticed anything of him. She frowned and licked her lips, her expression vague and distant before she randomly stared down at her hands.
“He held so tight even though I could feel the blood run down my palms. But… but his hand wasn’t bleeding. I mean… it was his blood but I don’t know where it was coming from. I just felt it. I felt all of it.”
She curled and uncurled her fingers with a strange fascination, as if they were covered in something Key couldn’t see. Minho’s blood, dripping on her hands that couldn’t be washed away no matter how much she scrubbed and scrubbed.
“I felt him holding so tight that my fingers hurt,” she muttered, crinkling her nose. “I felt it when it started getting slippery because of the blood, but he was such… such a stubborn idiot. He still wouldn’t let go.” Her voice subtly softened with affection that came so naturally.
“He held on until he completely faded from me. It was hours and hours, but I felt it, I felt him leave me.” Absentmindedly, she brought her hands together, resting them under her chin. “His hand was limp, like this huge glove that was wet and cold. He was cold. He was…”
But she couldn’t finish the sentence, and Key finally couldn’t stand it any longer. He stretched out his arms and wrapped them around her small body, catching the pieces of debris before they could scatter and holding her close to him so nothing could slip away.
Hara was shivering, her skin cold and brittle like thin ice that would shatter with the slightest touch and pour out the gallons of salt tears. Key tucked her head gently under his chin, biting his lip to not make a sound so he could make sure she was still breathing. She was, shallowly, her breath warm and light on the dampness of his shirt, her eyes still open and so disillusioned that he could see her spiraling deeper and deeper into the memories of that night. He pressed her closer despite the way her body stiffened in protest, and he held on until she finally gave up and sank into his embrace.
All these months, Key had so many questions that he knew would never be properly answered.
This morbid obsession slowly but gradually infected him like a disease; he wanted to see Hara’s guilt, the raw pain and the regret that she survived. He wanted her to show him she was suffering the way she should so he could be proven right all along. He needed to grasp something tangible in his hands, so he could know he had a reason to be so angry.
He needed his peace. Hatefully and selfishly, he needed a reason to justify everything he wished on her when he convinced himself the real Hara died, not having to face the consequences of the mess she left behind.
It didn’t matter if she was scared, if she felt she was all alone with the pain of losing someone she loved so much. She deserved it because she brought it on herself and everyone else.
It wasn’t fair.
Key adjusted the thick blanket so no part of her body was exposed, but Hara continued to shiver violently. He could hear her heart and how much slower it was beating, tightening his arms around her in a vain attempt to help. He cupped the side of her head as she leaned on him heavily with the weight of her burdens, too weak to stay up on her own. He could’ve sworn she was warmer than this just a moment ago.
“I was crying, and he promised he’d stay awake if I stopped,” Hara rambled on. “He… he told me he wouldn’t die. He actually said those words. But…”
She trailed off, and a soft rueful echo of a laugh followed. Key felt warm tears trickle onto his chest, her brown eyes cloudy with visions of those demons who bore Minho’s face, screaming at her.
“I couldn’t help it,” she said breathlessly. She clutched at Key’s shirt and curled herself against him, shaking her head deliriously. “No matter how hard I tried, my tears just kept flowing.” Her voice shook and Key knew she would cry again. She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I couldn’t stop…”
Key just smoothed his hand down the side of her hair, staring out at the river distractedly as the reality of what she was saying pulsed through him like a sizzling bolt of lightning.
So she really did believe it was her fault.
It surprised him that he was even a little taken aback at this. Key never gave it a thought at all, but now he realized just how damaged she really was. All that guilt must have haunted her to breaking point, and yet her porcelain mask hid it all; she was like a soda bottle shaken hard until the glass burst in a grand explosion.
It took this long, this much for her to gather the courage to say it out loud, to confess even though the person she was directing it to wouldn’t ever hear her.
Through the sea of demons, she could see Minho, herMinho, still the way he was from the last time she saw him; so happy and so ignorantly bliss. Even though she tried, she couldn’t remember him any other way and that was what made it cruel.
That innocent man she loved so much, and the only way she had to save his memory was keeping him trapped in a time when he had no clue it was to end so bloody and tragic.
It just wasn’t fair.
“I’m tired,” Hara murmured. “I don’t know what to do anymore.” She paused and heaved a sigh, opening her eyes again. She smiled with that sadness that consumed her, weary lines creasing over her forehead. “I wish he was here. He’d make everything better, he always did.”
That image of Minho was all there was left to hear her confession, to accept her and forgive her, but it wasn’t what she wanted. She could never have what she wanted because all she remembered from that night were all the things she couldn’t do.
She remembered being trapped, immobilized, her hand clasped weakly in his, and she heard his voice trembling in pain and laughter, pretending he was okay so she wouldn’t be scared. She remembered the taste of blood and steel in her mouth, the salty bitterness of gasoline and brine at her nostrils, and she remembered how it took everything she had to make sense of what he was saying. Even when she did, even when she told him she would stop crying, she still cried and cried because he was going to die and she couldn’t even turn her head to see his face.
It was such a high to plunge herself into her memories, and the fall was hard and painful as ever. Hara sunk deeper into the warmth of Key’s arms, reeling from it all.
“I… I miss him,” she confessed, her voice strained like it physically hurt her to say it aloud. She let out a soft sob, squirming under the blanket like it was “I miss him so much.” She hunched her shoulders, hair cascading out of place and falling from behind her ears. Her hand gripped Key’s sleeve hard, so much that her fingernails cut into the fabric, into his skin. “Why did I have to wake up?”
Key felt a stab in his heart and without realizing, he gripped a fistful of Hara’s hair possessively that it probably hurt her. But she didn’t react, her voice still dreamy but so very lucid at the same time.
“I wish I never woke up.”
Key’s shoulders started to shake as whatever it was inside him was scraping its way up, the white-hot anger that he couldn’t even yet understand.
“Don’t say that,” he heard himself say, unable to stop himself. He pressed his lips to her temple and rocked her gently. “Don’t ever, ever say that.”
He swallowed hard to keep himself composed, his hand quivering before he realized he was about to rip out the handful of Hara’s hair. He loosened the grip and went back to tender strokes, but the rest of his body utterly numb.
“It’s my punishment,” she said softly. “Because he died instead of me.”
“No.”
Key spent so long just watching the delicate petals fall one by one from this rose, this beautiful rose inside a glass case he had guarded with his life. He found fascination in waiting for its demise, knowing that just one touch, one little touch and he could crumble it to dust and released to the wind, but he chose to stand back and watch it slowly decay until all its beauty was left shriveled on the ground.
It was supposed to be the one thing motivating him to stay, to keep him from just leaving it all here to rot. He wanted to witness this beautiful destruction reach its climatic end, feel the earth rumble and shake under his feet, but it was only now he realized how unprepared he was at the sight of that last lingering petal.
“I’m tired,” Hara muttered, heavy-hearted. “Every day is the same. I wake up and the sun hurts my eyes. I breathe and it hurts my lungs. It’s all so loud and bright… I can’t stand it, Kibum ah.”
She licked her lips that had gone dry from the salt air, rubbing her chest as the string of words that followed seemed to take everything for her to say.
“I just… want it to stop.” She wrapped herself around his forearm, hugging it tightly into her chest that her diaphragm pressed into his bone, feeling it contract and expand with her batted breath, her repressed tears, her cry for help.
“Please, please just make it stop…”
She sounded soft, almost innocent, like a little girl wishing for the rain to go away so she could go outside and play, but Key knew what Hara meant, and that there was no innocence in those words she had chosen.
That look in her eyes, pleading to him because her body was too exhausted to express it. Desperate, petty, wanting any possible way out like a mangled dog lying in the street, begging him for a mercy kill.
Rage surged through Key’s veins and he pulled his arm from Hara’s grasp, disgusted at her. He didn’t even care when she stumbled at his abrupt release.
“You want it to stop?” he repeated, his voice coming out hoarse and raspy.
Hara pushed herself up from the grounds with her hands, staring at him with those empty eyes and he just shook his head, whether in denial, shock or disdain, he didn’t even know.
“You want it to end so you decided to walk into the river to drown yourself? It will make it all go away? Is that what you think?”
His voice grew harsher and harsher, the words viciously spewing out from the back of his throat that he couldn’t even tell if he was the one saying them. All he knew was the burning pain in his chest was becoming hotter and hotter, ready to burst and he could only see white rage, his mind blinded by anger, more than he had ever felt before. He staggered onto his feet, his limps shaking when finally, finally he lost control of himself.
“What are you even thinking?!” he screamed. “Who do you think you are, to just go and die?! Do you think you’ll go to heaven? Do you think that’s where you’ll end up, where you’ll find him again?!” Hara lowered her head but he grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look back at him.
“THERE IS NO HEAVEN, DO YOU UNDERSTAND!! You’ll never ever see him again!”
Key’s heart pounded fast and loud, pumping hot blood painfully into his chest like boiling water into a glass cup. He knew how cruel he was being, but he couldn’t stop.
He never spoke about it, his faith, his belief. Everything he was taught growing up about God and how Heaven was what everyone wanted to go, the paradise of no pain or suffering that people dreamed about, the reward for humankind after being taken away by death.
A place that was good, a place that was good.
He remembered how his mother comforted him after a funeral, telling him tales of a wonderful afterlife, how it was all beautiful and there would be no sadness, but as Key grew older and wearier, he learned they were just lies and stories made up to fill in the blanks of what we could never know.
Key stopped believing a long time ago.
People died, that was it. No heaven, no hell; it all ended with the heart’s last beat and they were gone.
How was that good?
How could you just pretend not to feel it, when the last warmth vanishes from their hands, their last breath from their lips?
Was it because some people were so weak that they make themselves believe in an afterlife? Because it was too hard not to?
That was it, wasn’t it? They just couldn’t bear the idea of death being a big black nothing.
They couldn’t bear the thought of their loved ones not existing.
Key saw something indistinguishable flicker in Hara’s eyes before she pushed his hand off and turned away to break their gaze, proving to him that his words had penetrated that façade that even showed any inkling that she was okay.
She was never going to be okay again.
Abruptly, Hara stood up with the blanket still around her and turned her back to him, walking a few steps towards the riverbank. She hunched her shoulders and shivered, trying to clutch the blanket tighter. It was a reaction; he was suddenly so blunt after all this time walking on eggshells around her, she wouldn’t want to listen. Key knew she wouldn’t, not in the state she was in, but he didn’t relent.
Something told him this might be the only opportunity he would ever get to finally make her listen to him. He didn’t know why, he didn’t want to, but a feeling gnawed at his stomach and he couldn’t ignore it.
He slowly pushed himself to his feet, his legs numb from the cold that he could barely feel them. His body tensed at the sudden flow of blood and the lump growing in his throat threatened to choke him, but his expression remained hard and focused on Hara that he didn’t take notice.
“Do you know what’s really going to happen after that?” he asked, keeping his voice firm and steady.
The silent breeze grazed their shoulders and tugged at the long dark locks of Hara’s damp hair that still moved, but she didn’t say anything. Cautiously, he took a step closer to her.
“It’ll be so cold that you won’t be able to swim, even when you want to. You won’t be able to get out, you’ll drown even if you try to swim.”
Key took another step, hovering behind her that his breath brushed over the small part of her neck that wasn’t covered.
“Then someone will find you,” he muttered, lowing to an intimidating whisper. He placed his hands on her shoulders, leaning in to her ear. “Your body floating in the water like a dead animal.”
Key watched her carefully, hoping to catch a shudder of any kind of reaction, whether from what he was saying or the cold, but she remained so rigid under the thick blanket it was like she had turned to stone. Any sense of caution he had just a second ago disappeared as anger took hold once more.
“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?!”
He grabbed her arm and swung her around hard. She slammed into his chest and the blanket fell onto the ground in a heap, exposing her small drenched body. Her head lolled and her eyes averted to the ground like she was disorientated, but Key held her firm. He seized her jaw, forcibly bringing her drooping gaze to meet with his.
“Are you that selfish?” he asked harshly. “Are you so selfish that you’ll do this to us, to me?!” He shook her again, anger boiling over. “Don’t you even realize we’ll be the ones who will have to bury you?!!”
Overwhelmed by his own words, he released Hara and stumbled back, huffing for breath with his hand on his chest. His heart was throbbing loudly and painfully, jolting his entire body that he could barely hold himself on his feet.
“I won’t bury you, Hara!!” he exclaimed. He tightened his trembling hand into a fist, shaking his head hard as his vision blurred with tears. “Do you understand me?! I won’t! I-I won’t…”
His voice broke and he couldn’t finish, the words choking him as they tried to thrash their way up his throat.
Key never wanted to say the truth aloud, not like this. He just wanted to make her understand so she would think about her family, friends and all those who cared for her, cried and suffered for her, everyone who wanted her to stop torturing herself. He needed her to open her eyes without those rose-tinted glasses, to see that no heaven was worth this and that she’ll be nothing more than a trail of dust after the fire.
It was meant to drag her out of that world where she had to relive her nightmares over and over. It was meant to save her from that, to take her back to reality, back home where she belonged, and all this time when he ran it through his mind, he thought it was worth it even if he had to shatter her a little. Even if it was intended to break her, he forgot by saying it out loud meant he couldn’t spare himself the pain.
The old wounds that were almost healed ripped open once again, soaking in the poison.
Key shook his head, ready to just give up and lie down to die, because it was about all he could take.
A magnetic force pulled him towards her, the tingling in his muscles resigning and he had no strength left after the anger drained him. Now… now he just wanted to know. Raising his hand to her face, he gently touched a strand of Hara’s hair with his knuckles, searching in her dark unreadable eyes for those unspoken words so perhaps she wouldn’t have to answer the question he was about to ask.
But he still needed to ask. God knew he needed to ask.
“Don’t you care about us?” he asked softly, genuinely not knowing. Unconsciously, he drew his hand closer, caressing her soft cheek.
“Does it mean nothing to you that we’re all still here?”
He had been too scared, fearing what her answer would be, but once the words left his lips and she was there, not saying anything even when he wished more than anything she would… he knew he’d made a huge mistake.
Futilely, a part of him waited for her to speak and for that tiny spark of hope that whatever it was she’d say, anything at all, it would somehow make everything better.
It started rising again, that unstoppable dread inside him. He stifled a breath, desperate to stop even the creaking in his lungs so he could make sure he would hear what she’d have to say. All those times when he’s disregard what she rambled on about, this was the moment where he needed her to say something, anything. The air around them was so thick with tension that Key felt like suffocating, waiting with such desperation that he didn’t realize his face was now wet with tears.
Yet she didn’t say a word, and he hoped with all his heart that it was because she couldn’t answer, but something changed in those eyes, the flicker he at first denied he even saw, but the colour of her irises became clearer and clearer that he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there.
The look of shame that shimmered almost unrecognizably under the glaze of unshed tears, the thoughts that escaped through the windows of her soul that no one else was supposed to understand. But Key did. He understood and it made his blood run cold.
It did mean nothing to her.
His heart pounded in his ears and he backed away, stunned, wanting to look away from those eyes even though he couldn’t break the gaze. Those eyes that were screaming at him, making every cell in his body fill with dread and regret that he ever spoke.
She didn’t care.
She really didn’t care about the rest of them… but the worst part was that Key realized he understood why.
Everyone had moved on. Even though still grieving their friend and brother in most parts, they had all learned how to smile and laugh again now. That feeling was gone, the raw pain and ache of missing someone they loved, and slowly yet gradually, they would all end up letting go completely.
It was human instinct, human survival so time wouldn’t leave them behind. Whatever it took to stop the pain, twisting their grief into hope for Minho’s peace in heaven, or telling themselves day after day that wasted tears would do no good. It was so much easier that everyone willingly accepted it so the weight of the burden could be lifted.
They wanted to forget the pain, but Hara didn’t. That pain was Minho, that pain was part of her love for him and she was so desperate in holding onto him that she was left behind by everyone else.
She was just a dent in the smooth surface, glossed over by the copy of the life that was once hers, who she used to be. Now, what she had become was buried alive inside a tomb where no one could reach her, and she’d stay there until they’d forget her.
They all loved her and cherished her and wanted what was best, but the truth was that they didn’t need her.
Even with the tears shed over what happened, all that she lost, she was now just this empty shell of the person she used to be, and there was nothing they could do or say that would give her back the only thing to make it better. It was who she was now, the grieving girl who was left to go insane from her loss. Take away the pain and she would have nothing left.
She didn’t care about what happened to the rest of them. She didn’t need to care, because they were all going to be fine. They were all going to be okay.
Key had been wrong the whole time.
He thought Hara was just looking for a means of escape. He thought her a coward, still running away from the blast, nothing more than a child wanting eternal sleep so she could keep dreaming… but it wasn’t that at all.
She had stopped running a long time ago. She knew now the difference between reality and dreams, and she knew they could never intersect.
She knew her perfect paradise didn’t exist anymore and no heaven could ever be enough.
It was with Minho. Wherever, whenever, her heaven was with him and only him, and she could never again see him. Not the way she wanted, not the way he was when he was living and happy, when she could touch his warm hands and smell his favorite cologne, and run her fingers through his soft hair.
Never again.
He was gone along with Hara’s soul, and no matter what she did, even if she lived till the end of her days or simply killed herself now, it wouldn’t make a difference.
There was no salvation waiting for her.
No peace, no solace, no light at the end of the tunnel, because this pain that ached every minute of every day, that choked her and wrung her dry of her tears and sanity… it wouldn’t ever go away. In life or in death, it could never stop.
Minho was Hara’s only reason to live or die, and now he was gone, everything that ever existed no longer mattered.
It wasn’t that she wanted to see him again. It was that she couldn’t, and she knew she couldn’t.
Knowing this was what made it worse than death.
The minutes passed and heartbeats slowed down, the adrenaline rush calming and Key was finally able to think clearly again.
He carried Hara out of the water and set her down where she slowly recovered from the shock, her eyes wet with water and tears. The car was parked behind them where he left it, and he was relieved he made that right decision to pull over close enough that he wouldn’t leave Hara’s side.
The engine was off and the key taken out of the ignition; the danger had subsided so he didn’t have to rush anymore. Hara was safe.
She was shivering from the cold, her hospital gown still soaked from head to toe. She refused to get in the car to warm up so Key didn’t force her, letting her sit there for as long as she needed, just gazing out at the river.
He quietly went to the car and took off his jacket, heavy with water, wringing it dry before tossing it into the backseat of the car. He fished his phone from his trouser pocket (wet but miraculously still working) and as he predicted, there were dozens of missed calls.
No doubt Taemin must have panicked after Key left so quickly, calling as many people as he could to figure out where he went, but all it ended up doing was causing chaos where they all tried to reach him at once. 58 missed calls, 35 messages, all of which were the same repeated questions. Where are you? Call me back. Pick up the phone, please. It was so careless of them; Key could almost smell the plastic of the phone overheating and the screen was flashing dysfunctionally with the battery now down to its last block.
He only had enough to make one call.
Key felt a pang of regret in his chest as he scrolled down the missed calls; he hadn’t called anyone yet, not his manager, not the police, not even Nicole. He hadn’t even the chance to think about it until now, he hadn’t even considered what was going to happen next.
They’d all coming running, wouldn’t they? The hospital, the managers, the media… they’d all be coming for Hara. Dread churned in the pit of Key’s stomach as he thought about it, and how he wasn’t sure if he even was prepared; all those people who would fawn over her, speaking in frantic loud voices that drowned out everything else, everything she had to say… she would suffocate. It all depended whether she’d be ready to handle it when they got back.
A storm was coming, and Key was the one who was going to drive her right into it. He had a headache just imagining their faces, because no matter how much he didn’t want that to be what was waiting for Hara, it was.
He shook his head wearily and turned the phone off, figuring it wiser to save the power and make his last call later. Even though he knew how worried Nicole was right now, he was sure she would understand later when he explained.
Key slipped the phone away and shot another glance at Hara over his shoulder. It had been about 20 minutes now, and she hadn’t said a single thing to him now that she calmed down, and he pondered whether or not to go over and talk. He was never the best person for this kind of thing, he couldn’t even bring himself to talk about his grief and allowed it to bubble and simmer inside him until he was ready to explode. He never trusted anyone else to really understand his pain even though they were going through it too. It had been so long since he’d had a decent conversation with someone without it resulting in an argument or him walking off, but he knew that he had to be that decent conversation for Hara. He wasn’t sure how to even start, but it only took a brief moment before he was bitterly reminded he was the only one here who could. He hated being the person who pushed, sometimes he’d push too hard that they’d fall and get hurt.
He rolled his eyes to dismiss the sentiments that came with his pity, pulling out an old blanket the manager kept in the trunk ever since winter arrived. It was a simple little thing, meant to be fought amongst the members while they waited in the freezing cold in the middle of traffic, though it was quickly abandoned as useless since it was so tiny.
Key found the lumpy thing lodged in the corner, covered in dust and stinking of stale gasoline and mold, but thankfully it was dry. He felt bad having to give Hara this, but there was nothing else since his clothes were wet and she needed to get warm. A part of him wanted so bad to scold her for being so stubborn to refuse staying in the car where there was a perfectly good heating system, but he begrudgingly held back his tongue for the sake of his own sanity. After a few shakes and pats he managed to clean it enough to make it look presentable, at least in his eyes, and he hugged it against his chest, the only spot on his body that was still dry, hoping it would absorb some of his warmth into it.
He took it over to where Hara sat, wrapping the blanket over her shoulders and tucking it in so she could get warm as quickly as possible. She sat so still he wouldn’t have expected her to even notice, but she hissed at the sudden brush of cotton and shrank almost instantly into its safety, clutching the corners and pulling it taut around herself. She blew out a thin stream of white smoke forcefully through her lips, and in an instant that brief glimpse of the vulnerable cold girl vanished, turning back into the marble statue who stared with empty yearning at the tide washing in and out, in and out, in and out…
It made Key curious, what must be running through her mind behind the mask of porcelain that covered up that anguish he saw just a few minutes ago, as if nothing happened. He drew closer tentatively to her side and crouched down, tilting his head to try to see her eyes that could never hide the emotions like the rest of her face could. But she was turned away from him, refusing him and his company.
Key immediately regretted the spot he’d chosen to sit on, the ground hard and grainy like salt under his palms. He winced and dusted his hands of the dry dirt and tiny jagged rocks, sighing with disdain at noting how much colder it was near the water than when he was simply standing up. He looked back at Hara again and pondered again out of habit if it was a bad idea not to just force her to go to the car with him since she must still be so cold. He could almost see the water drops turning to icicles on her hair, but other than that she didn’t look like she preferred anywhere else right now.
Here, it was like this haven away from the noise and chaos of the outside world, a perfect place to escape real life and listen to the sound of your own heart beating. In this place, the world had stopped spinning, and somehow they were allowed refuge in borrowed time where they could breathe and think.
Hiding away seemed cowardly and even a bit irresponsible in Key’s opinion, but Hara needed time, and right now he was the only one who could give it to her. It was really all he could do.
He wanted her to tell him herself when she was ready to go back.
The minutes passed and they sat there together for a long time, the world hushed for them except the gentle crashing tides and a faint whistling noise as the wind blew tauntingly through the reeds of the bank.
Key hugged his knees to his chest to keep himself warm, staring out at the pending sunset in the horizon. It was beautiful and almost hypnotic, but it didn’t affect Key. He couldn’t drown in that tranquility anymore like he used to, he couldn’t throw away his troubled mind and just forget everything that happened.
He was too cynical now to think of it as some miracle chance to let him rest to not be constantly worried or angry or bitter. He’d come so close to just letting himself break under all this pressure, it didn’t seem to mean much that it all fate could do now was delay it just a little longer. It was too late for anything else.
Key gave the provided peaceful atmosphere around him a few more minutes to see if he could somehow miraculously adapt to it, but after a while he couldn’t bring himself to let go of his thoughts. It was too quiet and too soon, his body was still bracing itself from a feeling in his bones telling him to be prepared. They were in the eye of the storm, nothing was as it seemed, and Hara could break again at any given time. She hadn’t shattered completely, not yet.
Key wondered to himself what Hara must be thinking about. He was always curious, though he never admitted it to himself, fascinated by how doll-like she became when she was so deeply absorbed in her daydreams. A porcelain face with a mannequin body, and eyes he sometimes caught not blinking for minutes, even hours.
She looked so eerily beautiful, so perfect that sometimes it frightened him.
He made up ridiculous theories to stop himself from worrying about her. What was there to worry about anyway? Hara had become so lost, what chances were she even remembered what blinking was like? Those times when she fell into one of her trances, so happy and ignorant of the real world, but as soon as she blinked, she’d wake up again in her empty little room by herself. Why would anyone in her position want to blink? She was so obsessed with holding onto her fantasy that she refused to blink, so her eyes watered. And when her eyes watered, tears would fall. That was what Key convinced himself to believe, that her tears weren’t because she was sad, but because she was insane with a body no longer hers to control. Maybe the weight of all self-denial eventually crushed the last bit of sanity she had left.
Key didn’t know if there would ever be a right time to ask her how much she remembered the accident, how many sleepless nights she had nightmares about it. He wondered just exactly how much it took to bring down that wall, reducing her to this state of mind. He regretted dismissing all those opportunities he could have taken to help her, when he selfishly kept away to protect his pride. God, he could’ve have helped her so much. It wouldn’t have come to this, she wouldn’t have suffered so much.
“It happened here, didn’t it?”
Key snapped out of his thoughts, surprised to hear Hara suddenly talk after such a long silence. He looked at her to find her still sitting motionlessly except her eyelashes fluttering slightly, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips when she felt his gaze on her.
“The accident,” she said meekly. She turned her head, and her eyes met with his for the first time. “It was here.”
She sounded different. The way she spoke, he couldn’t even remember the last time she sounded like this; so soft like she just woke up, torn abruptly out of a nightmare but still able to remember every detail about it. Now that he finally could look at those deep brown eyes, Key saw it, all the scars, all that collateral damage, bleeding out so much he couldn’t believe she could still be in one piece like this, still intact. Still alive.
Still his Hara.
Stunned, Key opened his mouth but nothing came out, a lump swelling in his throat and stopping any noise from coming out. It was ironic, waiting this long to have a real conversation with her, only to be caught completely off-guard by the fact that the chance had actually come at last. Hara smiled again, seeming to understand his silence. She brought up her hand from under the blanket, pale from the cold, pointing at the riverbank just in front of them.
“This-this was where we cr-crashed,” she said haltingly, her voice worn and tired. She swallowed and took another deep breath. “This is where he died, isn’t it?” She glanced over her shoulder wistfully at the railing, running her eyes down to where the collision ripped through it.
“Right here.” She bowed her hand, pressing her palm flat on the ground at her side. She dug her fingers shallowly into the patch of dirt, crunching through it with her fingernails.
Key felt heat rise in his cheeks, suddenly feeling so strange and uncomfortable, almost nauseated. Even after all he’d been through, it hurt to hear her talk normally, more than he thought he was prepared for.
Normally, he went against his judgment to expect her to relapse back into one of her hallucinations… but her voice, though it was clear and steady, there was this overwhelming sorrow that settled into her words so easily in ways he never heard before.
A gust of wind ripped through the silence, slicing into exposed skin and flaying up streaks of sand from the unmoving ground, and everything became ten times colder. The clouds moved, hovering over the last source of light and heat in the horizon as it slowly but gradually dissolving into shades of pink and orange, night awaiting to cloak the world in darkness.
Hara made a whimpering noise, suddenly looking frail and vulnerable, like she was only now reacting to the deathly chill. She lowered her head so Key couldn’t see her face anymore, letting out a humorless laugh that was hollow and filled with nothing but pain and self-loathing.
“He was still alive,” she chuckled mirthlessly.
She raised her head and Key saw her eyes shimmering with raw tears from saying his name, but she shuddered and wiped them away like they were burning her cheeks. The sudden visible break from her composure caught Key by surprise, even shocking him a little. Out of instinct, he moved closer, extending out his hand but then quickly drew it back again, unsure if he should touch her. She glanced at him again, and he saw how helpless, how human she looked. The cracks in the façade she had put up, that the dam holding back all the grief, it was going to burst right here, right now.
“Kibum, he was still talking to me.”
She hadn’t called him Kibum in ages, to the point where he stopped caring. Yet hearing it now, something in his stomach stirred, some shapeless thing that was going to fly into his throat and make him cry. But he wasn’t going to cry, not in front of her. But if he wasn’t going to cry, he couldn’t open his mouth. He couldn’t tell her to stop, so she didn’t stop.
“He was holding my hand,” she went on, not seeming to have noticed anything of him. She frowned and licked her lips, her expression vague and distant before she randomly stared down at her hands.
“He held so tight even though I could feel the blood run down my palms. But… but his hand wasn’t bleeding. I mean… it was his blood but I don’t know where it was coming from. I just felt it. I felt all of it.”
She curled and uncurled her fingers with a strange fascination, as if they were covered in something Key couldn’t see. Minho’s blood, dripping on her hands that couldn’t be washed away no matter how much she scrubbed and scrubbed.
“I felt him holding so tight that my fingers hurt,” she muttered, crinkling her nose. “I felt it when it started getting slippery because of the blood, but he was such… such a stubborn idiot. He still wouldn’t let go.” Her voice subtly softened with affection that came so naturally.
“He held on until he completely faded from me. It was hours and hours, but I felt it, I felt him leave me.” Absentmindedly, she brought her hands together, resting them under her chin. “His hand was limp, like this huge glove that was wet and cold. He was cold. He was…”
But she couldn’t finish the sentence, and Key finally couldn’t stand it any longer. He stretched out his arms and wrapped them around her small body, catching the pieces of debris before they could scatter and holding her close to him so nothing could slip away.
Hara was shivering, her skin cold and brittle like thin ice that would shatter with the slightest touch and pour out the gallons of salt tears. Key tucked her head gently under his chin, biting his lip to not make a sound so he could make sure she was still breathing. She was, shallowly, her breath warm and light on the dampness of his shirt, her eyes still open and so disillusioned that he could see her spiraling deeper and deeper into the memories of that night. He pressed her closer despite the way her body stiffened in protest, and he held on until she finally gave up and sank into his embrace.
All these months, Key had so many questions that he knew would never be properly answered.
This morbid obsession slowly but gradually infected him like a disease; he wanted to see Hara’s guilt, the raw pain and the regret that she survived. He wanted her to show him she was suffering the way she should so he could be proven right all along. He needed to grasp something tangible in his hands, so he could know he had a reason to be so angry.
He needed his peace. Hatefully and selfishly, he needed a reason to justify everything he wished on her when he convinced himself the real Hara died, not having to face the consequences of the mess she left behind.
It didn’t matter if she was scared, if she felt she was all alone with the pain of losing someone she loved so much. She deserved it because she brought it on herself and everyone else.
It wasn’t fair.
Key adjusted the thick blanket so no part of her body was exposed, but Hara continued to shiver violently. He could hear her heart and how much slower it was beating, tightening his arms around her in a vain attempt to help. He cupped the side of her head as she leaned on him heavily with the weight of her burdens, too weak to stay up on her own. He could’ve sworn she was warmer than this just a moment ago.
“I was crying, and he promised he’d stay awake if I stopped,” Hara rambled on. “He… he told me he wouldn’t die. He actually said those words. But…”
She trailed off, and a soft rueful echo of a laugh followed. Key felt warm tears trickle onto his chest, her brown eyes cloudy with visions of those demons who bore Minho’s face, screaming at her.
“I couldn’t help it,” she said breathlessly. She clutched at Key’s shirt and curled herself against him, shaking her head deliriously. “No matter how hard I tried, my tears just kept flowing.” Her voice shook and Key knew she would cry again. She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I couldn’t stop…”
Key just smoothed his hand down the side of her hair, staring out at the river distractedly as the reality of what she was saying pulsed through him like a sizzling bolt of lightning.
So she really did believe it was her fault.
It surprised him that he was even a little taken aback at this. Key never gave it a thought at all, but now he realized just how damaged she really was. All that guilt must have haunted her to breaking point, and yet her porcelain mask hid it all; she was like a soda bottle shaken hard until the glass burst in a grand explosion.
It took this long, this much for her to gather the courage to say it out loud, to confess even though the person she was directing it to wouldn’t ever hear her.
Through the sea of demons, she could see Minho, herMinho, still the way he was from the last time she saw him; so happy and so ignorantly bliss. Even though she tried, she couldn’t remember him any other way and that was what made it cruel.
That innocent man she loved so much, and the only way she had to save his memory was keeping him trapped in a time when he had no clue it was to end so bloody and tragic.
It just wasn’t fair.
“I’m tired,” Hara murmured. “I don’t know what to do anymore.” She paused and heaved a sigh, opening her eyes again. She smiled with that sadness that consumed her, weary lines creasing over her forehead. “I wish he was here. He’d make everything better, he always did.”
That image of Minho was all there was left to hear her confession, to accept her and forgive her, but it wasn’t what she wanted. She could never have what she wanted because all she remembered from that night were all the things she couldn’t do.
She remembered being trapped, immobilized, her hand clasped weakly in his, and she heard his voice trembling in pain and laughter, pretending he was okay so she wouldn’t be scared. She remembered the taste of blood and steel in her mouth, the salty bitterness of gasoline and brine at her nostrils, and she remembered how it took everything she had to make sense of what he was saying. Even when she did, even when she told him she would stop crying, she still cried and cried because he was going to die and she couldn’t even turn her head to see his face.
It was such a high to plunge herself into her memories, and the fall was hard and painful as ever. Hara sunk deeper into the warmth of Key’s arms, reeling from it all.
“I… I miss him,” she confessed, her voice strained like it physically hurt her to say it aloud. She let out a soft sob, squirming under the blanket like it was “I miss him so much.” She hunched her shoulders, hair cascading out of place and falling from behind her ears. Her hand gripped Key’s sleeve hard, so much that her fingernails cut into the fabric, into his skin. “Why did I have to wake up?”
Key felt a stab in his heart and without realizing, he gripped a fistful of Hara’s hair possessively that it probably hurt her. But she didn’t react, her voice still dreamy but so very lucid at the same time.
“I wish I never woke up.”
Key’s shoulders started to shake as whatever it was inside him was scraping its way up, the white-hot anger that he couldn’t even yet understand.
“Don’t say that,” he heard himself say, unable to stop himself. He pressed his lips to her temple and rocked her gently. “Don’t ever, ever say that.”
He swallowed hard to keep himself composed, his hand quivering before he realized he was about to rip out the handful of Hara’s hair. He loosened the grip and went back to tender strokes, but the rest of his body utterly numb.
“It’s my punishment,” she said softly. “Because he died instead of me.”
“No.”
Key spent so long just watching the delicate petals fall one by one from this rose, this beautiful rose inside a glass case he had guarded with his life. He found fascination in waiting for its demise, knowing that just one touch, one little touch and he could crumble it to dust and released to the wind, but he chose to stand back and watch it slowly decay until all its beauty was left shriveled on the ground.
It was supposed to be the one thing motivating him to stay, to keep him from just leaving it all here to rot. He wanted to witness this beautiful destruction reach its climatic end, feel the earth rumble and shake under his feet, but it was only now he realized how unprepared he was at the sight of that last lingering petal.
“I’m tired,” Hara muttered, heavy-hearted. “Every day is the same. I wake up and the sun hurts my eyes. I breathe and it hurts my lungs. It’s all so loud and bright… I can’t stand it, Kibum ah.”
She licked her lips that had gone dry from the salt air, rubbing her chest as the string of words that followed seemed to take everything for her to say.
“I just… want it to stop.” She wrapped herself around his forearm, hugging it tightly into her chest that her diaphragm pressed into his bone, feeling it contract and expand with her batted breath, her repressed tears, her cry for help.
“Please, please just make it stop…”
She sounded soft, almost innocent, like a little girl wishing for the rain to go away so she could go outside and play, but Key knew what Hara meant, and that there was no innocence in those words she had chosen.
That look in her eyes, pleading to him because her body was too exhausted to express it. Desperate, petty, wanting any possible way out like a mangled dog lying in the street, begging him for a mercy kill.
Rage surged through Key’s veins and he pulled his arm from Hara’s grasp, disgusted at her. He didn’t even care when she stumbled at his abrupt release.
“You want it to stop?” he repeated, his voice coming out hoarse and raspy.
Hara pushed herself up from the grounds with her hands, staring at him with those empty eyes and he just shook his head, whether in denial, shock or disdain, he didn’t even know.
“You want it to end so you decided to walk into the river to drown yourself? It will make it all go away? Is that what you think?”
His voice grew harsher and harsher, the words viciously spewing out from the back of his throat that he couldn’t even tell if he was the one saying them. All he knew was the burning pain in his chest was becoming hotter and hotter, ready to burst and he could only see white rage, his mind blinded by anger, more than he had ever felt before. He staggered onto his feet, his limps shaking when finally, finally he lost control of himself.
“What are you even thinking?!” he screamed. “Who do you think you are, to just go and die?! Do you think you’ll go to heaven? Do you think that’s where you’ll end up, where you’ll find him again?!” Hara lowered her head but he grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look back at him.
“THERE IS NO HEAVEN, DO YOU UNDERSTAND!! You’ll never ever see him again!”
Key’s heart pounded fast and loud, pumping hot blood painfully into his chest like boiling water into a glass cup. He knew how cruel he was being, but he couldn’t stop.
He never spoke about it, his faith, his belief. Everything he was taught growing up about God and how Heaven was what everyone wanted to go, the paradise of no pain or suffering that people dreamed about, the reward for humankind after being taken away by death.
A place that was good, a place that was good.
He remembered how his mother comforted him after a funeral, telling him tales of a wonderful afterlife, how it was all beautiful and there would be no sadness, but as Key grew older and wearier, he learned they were just lies and stories made up to fill in the blanks of what we could never know.
Key stopped believing a long time ago.
People died, that was it. No heaven, no hell; it all ended with the heart’s last beat and they were gone.
How was that good?
How could you just pretend not to feel it, when the last warmth vanishes from their hands, their last breath from their lips?
Was it because some people were so weak that they make themselves believe in an afterlife? Because it was too hard not to?
That was it, wasn’t it? They just couldn’t bear the idea of death being a big black nothing.
They couldn’t bear the thought of their loved ones not existing.
Key saw something indistinguishable flicker in Hara’s eyes before she pushed his hand off and turned away to break their gaze, proving to him that his words had penetrated that façade that even showed any inkling that she was okay.
She was never going to be okay again.
Abruptly, Hara stood up with the blanket still around her and turned her back to him, walking a few steps towards the riverbank. She hunched her shoulders and shivered, trying to clutch the blanket tighter. It was a reaction; he was suddenly so blunt after all this time walking on eggshells around her, she wouldn’t want to listen. Key knew she wouldn’t, not in the state she was in, but he didn’t relent.
Something told him this might be the only opportunity he would ever get to finally make her listen to him. He didn’t know why, he didn’t want to, but a feeling gnawed at his stomach and he couldn’t ignore it.
He slowly pushed himself to his feet, his legs numb from the cold that he could barely feel them. His body tensed at the sudden flow of blood and the lump growing in his throat threatened to choke him, but his expression remained hard and focused on Hara that he didn’t take notice.
“Do you know what’s really going to happen after that?” he asked, keeping his voice firm and steady.
The silent breeze grazed their shoulders and tugged at the long dark locks of Hara’s damp hair that still moved, but she didn’t say anything. Cautiously, he took a step closer to her.
“It’ll be so cold that you won’t be able to swim, even when you want to. You won’t be able to get out, you’ll drown even if you try to swim.”
Key took another step, hovering behind her that his breath brushed over the small part of her neck that wasn’t covered.
“Then someone will find you,” he muttered, lowing to an intimidating whisper. He placed his hands on her shoulders, leaning in to her ear. “Your body floating in the water like a dead animal.”
Key watched her carefully, hoping to catch a shudder of any kind of reaction, whether from what he was saying or the cold, but she remained so rigid under the thick blanket it was like she had turned to stone. Any sense of caution he had just a second ago disappeared as anger took hold once more.
“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?!”
He grabbed her arm and swung her around hard. She slammed into his chest and the blanket fell onto the ground in a heap, exposing her small drenched body. Her head lolled and her eyes averted to the ground like she was disorientated, but Key held her firm. He seized her jaw, forcibly bringing her drooping gaze to meet with his.
“Are you that selfish?” he asked harshly. “Are you so selfish that you’ll do this to us, to me?!” He shook her again, anger boiling over. “Don’t you even realize we’ll be the ones who will have to bury you?!!”
Overwhelmed by his own words, he released Hara and stumbled back, huffing for breath with his hand on his chest. His heart was throbbing loudly and painfully, jolting his entire body that he could barely hold himself on his feet.
“I won’t bury you, Hara!!” he exclaimed. He tightened his trembling hand into a fist, shaking his head hard as his vision blurred with tears. “Do you understand me?! I won’t! I-I won’t…”
His voice broke and he couldn’t finish, the words choking him as they tried to thrash their way up his throat.
Key never wanted to say the truth aloud, not like this. He just wanted to make her understand so she would think about her family, friends and all those who cared for her, cried and suffered for her, everyone who wanted her to stop torturing herself. He needed her to open her eyes without those rose-tinted glasses, to see that no heaven was worth this and that she’ll be nothing more than a trail of dust after the fire.
It was meant to drag her out of that world where she had to relive her nightmares over and over. It was meant to save her from that, to take her back to reality, back home where she belonged, and all this time when he ran it through his mind, he thought it was worth it even if he had to shatter her a little. Even if it was intended to break her, he forgot by saying it out loud meant he couldn’t spare himself the pain.
The old wounds that were almost healed ripped open once again, soaking in the poison.
Key shook his head, ready to just give up and lie down to die, because it was about all he could take.
A magnetic force pulled him towards her, the tingling in his muscles resigning and he had no strength left after the anger drained him. Now… now he just wanted to know. Raising his hand to her face, he gently touched a strand of Hara’s hair with his knuckles, searching in her dark unreadable eyes for those unspoken words so perhaps she wouldn’t have to answer the question he was about to ask.
But he still needed to ask. God knew he needed to ask.
“Don’t you care about us?” he asked softly, genuinely not knowing. Unconsciously, he drew his hand closer, caressing her soft cheek.
“Does it mean nothing to you that we’re all still here?”
He had been too scared, fearing what her answer would be, but once the words left his lips and she was there, not saying anything even when he wished more than anything she would… he knew he’d made a huge mistake.
Futilely, a part of him waited for her to speak and for that tiny spark of hope that whatever it was she’d say, anything at all, it would somehow make everything better.
It started rising again, that unstoppable dread inside him. He stifled a breath, desperate to stop even the creaking in his lungs so he could make sure he would hear what she’d have to say. All those times when he’s disregard what she rambled on about, this was the moment where he needed her to say something, anything. The air around them was so thick with tension that Key felt like suffocating, waiting with such desperation that he didn’t realize his face was now wet with tears.
Yet she didn’t say a word, and he hoped with all his heart that it was because she couldn’t answer, but something changed in those eyes, the flicker he at first denied he even saw, but the colour of her irises became clearer and clearer that he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there.
The look of shame that shimmered almost unrecognizably under the glaze of unshed tears, the thoughts that escaped through the windows of her soul that no one else was supposed to understand. But Key did. He understood and it made his blood run cold.
It did mean nothing to her.
His heart pounded in his ears and he backed away, stunned, wanting to look away from those eyes even though he couldn’t break the gaze. Those eyes that were screaming at him, making every cell in his body fill with dread and regret that he ever spoke.
She didn’t care.
She really didn’t care about the rest of them… but the worst part was that Key realized he understood why.
Everyone had moved on. Even though still grieving their friend and brother in most parts, they had all learned how to smile and laugh again now. That feeling was gone, the raw pain and ache of missing someone they loved, and slowly yet gradually, they would all end up letting go completely.
It was human instinct, human survival so time wouldn’t leave them behind. Whatever it took to stop the pain, twisting their grief into hope for Minho’s peace in heaven, or telling themselves day after day that wasted tears would do no good. It was so much easier that everyone willingly accepted it so the weight of the burden could be lifted.
They wanted to forget the pain, but Hara didn’t. That pain was Minho, that pain was part of her love for him and she was so desperate in holding onto him that she was left behind by everyone else.
She was just a dent in the smooth surface, glossed over by the copy of the life that was once hers, who she used to be. Now, what she had become was buried alive inside a tomb where no one could reach her, and she’d stay there until they’d forget her.
They all loved her and cherished her and wanted what was best, but the truth was that they didn’t need her.
Even with the tears shed over what happened, all that she lost, she was now just this empty shell of the person she used to be, and there was nothing they could do or say that would give her back the only thing to make it better. It was who she was now, the grieving girl who was left to go insane from her loss. Take away the pain and she would have nothing left.
She didn’t care about what happened to the rest of them. She didn’t need to care, because they were all going to be fine. They were all going to be okay.
Key had been wrong the whole time.
He thought Hara was just looking for a means of escape. He thought her a coward, still running away from the blast, nothing more than a child wanting eternal sleep so she could keep dreaming… but it wasn’t that at all.
She had stopped running a long time ago. She knew now the difference between reality and dreams, and she knew they could never intersect.
She knew her perfect paradise didn’t exist anymore and no heaven could ever be enough.
It was with Minho. Wherever, whenever, her heaven was with him and only him, and she could never again see him. Not the way she wanted, not the way he was when he was living and happy, when she could touch his warm hands and smell his favorite cologne, and run her fingers through his soft hair.
Never again.
He was gone along with Hara’s soul, and no matter what she did, even if she lived till the end of her days or simply killed herself now, it wouldn’t make a difference.
There was no salvation waiting for her.
No peace, no solace, no light at the end of the tunnel, because this pain that ached every minute of every day, that choked her and wrung her dry of her tears and sanity… it wouldn’t ever go away. In life or in death, it could never stop.
Minho was Hara’s only reason to live or die, and now he was gone, everything that ever existed no longer mattered.
It wasn’t that she wanted to see him again. It was that she couldn’t, and she knew she couldn’t.
Knowing this was what made it worse than death.