[Super Junior/SNSD] Hold Your Head Up You Silly Girl, Sungmin/Sooyoung, Sooyoung/Kyuhyun
Title: Hold Your Head Up You Silly Girl
Author: stimmingskanone
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sungmin/Sooyoung, one-sided!Sooyoung/Kyuhyun
Warnings: Explicit character murder. :|
Word Count: 2,680
Genre: Thriller? Creeper!fic?
Summary: He touches her shoulder lightly, and she freezes again. "There’s something you should know."
Across the living room of the apartment is a table covered in photo frames; there’s a red one in the middle with the two of them, in a suit and dress on Valentine’s Day, and Sooyoung keeps her eyes fixed on it, body still, breaths slow. She mouths his name (Sungmin) as she hears the baseball bat crash one, two, three times into the ground, obliterating her only connection to the outside world, to him. It’s not until the bat is quietly set down and the remains are pushed away with a shoe that she flinches, expecting more. Silence unnerves Sooyoung the most, and Kyuhyun has always been too quiet for her. She turns back to him slowly, looking up at him from under her bangs.
“I just…I just wanted to call him.”
Kyuhyun stares pointedly at the locked door, and then back at her. “There’s no need for that.”
She looks closer, searches for signs in his face, but he’s stoic, the way he’s always been around her. Sooyoung doesn’t understand how a human being can be so emotionless, so consistent, but perhaps he’s not human after all, considering what he’s doing. “Girlfriends usually call their boyfriends, you know,” she says, nodding anxiously as he approaches, “When there’s a family emergency.”
He touches her shoulder lightly, and she freezes again. “There’s something you should know.”
Sooyoung first meets Kyuhyun on a Sunday afternoon when she walks to Sungmin’s apartment in her nicest dress and relieves him from his thesis with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, but she hardly registers him in her mind that day, their “introduction” not even enough to warrant a strong first impression. Her boyfriend calls her a loser for taking the subway across town and then walking the extra distance, but he smiles at her between spoonfuls, clearly appreciative. “You may be loud,” he says, “But at least you’re useful.”
“You’re just as loud as me,” Sooyoung retorts, sticking her tongue out. Their relationship works like this, a strange mixture of affection and mockery. “But you don’t have any redeeming qualities, you’re just old.”
“I’ve got connections,” Sungmin says, smiling sweetly.
She laughs at that, high and bubbly. “Connections with who, the Gelato Mafia?”
He pouts for a moment, but then uses his spoon, covered in ice cream, to point behind him triumphantly. “No, Kyuhyun’s going to be rich.”
She pauses to connect the name with a face; she can’t. “Who are you talking about?” she asks, frowning. “Is this another one of your imaginary friends?”
Sungmin smacks her with the spoon and she grimaces, half-melted ice cream running down her shoulder. “No, he’s my roommate,” he says, and points to a man with his back to them, leaning over a laptop in intense concentration. “He skipped two grades when he was younger, and he still breezes through classes. His major’s useful too, unlike some people I could mention.”
“Oh.” She gives Kyuhyun more attention now, noticing just how different he is from Sungmin; his hair, uncombed, almost grazes his shoulders, his clothes are black and baggy and unremarkable. When she confirms that he has headphones in and can’t hear her (and therefore can’t judge her ignorance), she asks, “Why haven’t I seen him before?”
Sungmin shrugs. “He doesn’t like noise.”
She sees Kyuhyun a few more times after that, when she visits on weekends and comes over for dinner, but their stiff, polite conversations are irrelevant, as far as she knows, to anyone’s life.
Sooyoung is speechless, for the first time in years, when he tells her. She blinks, lets her jaw drop, and shakes her head slowly, still trying to comprehend his words, before she can finally force a one-word response.
“Why?”
Kyuhyun frowns. “Do you realize what you’re asking me for?” he snaps. “A reason for the most irrational thing in the world?”
“Do you even know me?” she blurts, suddenly angry.
“Well, you’re loud and feisty and infectious-“
“I didn’t want an answer,” she says, seething and forming her hands into fists.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” he replies, glaring. She shivers, waiting for him to explode, to punch her or even pick up the bat again, but he stands still, eyes fixated on hers. “I’m not Sungmin.”
Sooyoung doesn’t have an answer for that; for all the fear he’s commanding from her, the phone she’s going to make him replace, she still can’t help but feel a small, lingering shred of sympathy. “No, you’re not,” she agrees, shifting her weight.
Kyuhyun turns away from her as she speaks, walking to his desk and opening the first drawer. Sooyoung watches, confused, as he pulls out a box and walks toward her again, steps slow and calculated. He drums shaky fingers on the box, sighing. “Do you really love him?”
“Would I put up with him if I didn’t?”
His smile is crooked. “True, true,” he says. “So then…this”-and he glances at the box, just for a fleeting moment-“is the only way for us.”
Sooyoung cocks her head. “I don’t think you understand, I won’t-“
The box is open before she can react, one arm holding her still, the other shoving a rag in her face. Sooyoung gasps before her body falls limp, submissive, too early to hear Kyuhyun’s soft whisper in her ear, to feel his lips press against the side of her face.
Of the boyfriends Sooyoung’s had in her life, Sungmin certainly hasn’t been the kindest or the most suave; on the contrary, he mocks her voice and calls her names, but there’s something infectious about his personality that keeps her completely infatuated. He’s thrilling, unlike many of the people she’s known, if only because of his penchants for rule-bending and weekly surprises. It’s his spontaneity that makes him, but even she doesn’t expect him to come to her window at midnight in the middle of the week, dragging her into the Starbucks he works at after hours. She sits on the floor behind the counter, watching him as he runs around, checking for ingredients and turning on the smallest light he can find. He sighs victoriously and then turns back to her, kneeling so that they’re face to face.
“Everything’s here,” he says, grinning. “What do you want?”
She laughs. “A mocha frappuccino, I don’t drink anything else.”
Sungmin rolls his eyes and pushes himself up, grabbing the table to keep him upright. He makes a simple latte for himself first, but it’s a quick process, and he stretches his arms out to make Sooyoung’s creation. He works slower than he does during hours, mixing the ingredients just so and daintily decorating her whipped cream mountain with chocolate chips and swirls of sauce. He sticks the little green straw in carefully, so not to destroy the artwork, and sets it on the floor next to her. “There you go, you girl,” He grabs his latte and sits across from her. “Grown-ups drink coffee,”
“Maybe,” she says, licking whipped cream off her fingers. “But this tastes better.”
“Hold still.” Sungmin says, and reaches a hand out to her face, running his thumb across her nose. “You’re getting whipped cream everywhere. I don’t want to have to clean this place up again because of you and your frilly girl drinks.”
“Maybe I’ll just spill it.”
“I’ll kill you.”
Sooyoung smiles, the threat never truly being serious, and lets her eyes wander around the store. She wonders, for a minute, if he’ll get in trouble for this, but she figures he’s probably not concerned, and he’d laugh at her if she asked, anyway.
Sungmin opens his mouth to speak then, but then he closes it, running a hand through his hair. Sooyoung raises an eyebrow, sipping her drink, and when he does it again, she makes clear eye contact. He twitches and looks away, and her eyes narrow, questioning him. They sit still like this for what seems like hours, the only calm she’s ever had to experience around him. Silence unnerves her more than anything, particularly when it’s someone as vocal as him.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, finally, when she can’t take it anymore. “You drag me halfway across the city at midnight and then you yell at me not to make a mess, and now you won’t even talk to me.”
Sungmin looks up at her, sighing. “I might understand now,” he says, quietly, and she almost misses it entirely, “Why someone would be stupid enough to fall in love with you.”
She’s too shocked by his spontaneous seriousness to respond at first, staring into her drink. When she hears him get up to leave, she reaches out for his pant leg, pulling him back down. “Stop. I…I love you too, Sungmin.”
His expression immediately brightens, and he sits down again, smirking at her. “Of course you do,” he says, sipping his latte. “I’m flawless.”
Sooyoung rolls her eyes, scooping up whipped cream to smear in his hair. “I wouldn’t have said that if you were, you know.”
“Really?” he asks, failing to notice her handiwork. “Then I’m not the perfect boyfriend?” He pokes her stomach, pouting; Sooyoung does the same when she looks down to see latte-tinted whipped cream in the middle of her shirt. Digging her fingers into her cup, she shoves her hand, now holding the remains of her whipped cream mountain, in his face, and he retreats to the other end of the counter with a squeal. “Hey, cut that out, I broke into Starbucks for you.”
She laughs and crawls over to him, resting her head on his chest. “Don’t look so upset,” she says. “I’d rather date someone I don’t feel guilty about attacking anyway.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles, and Sooyoung wordlessly decides to sleep, her coffee abandoned on the other side of the room. Sungmin doesn’t wake her up.
She can’t feel her hair on her shoulders when she comes to, nor can she stretch her body up to look back at the frame she’d focused on earlier, struggling to break her limbs from their apparent bounds. With some observation, she realizes she’s lying on Sungmin’s dinner table, her hair hanging off one of the ends. She can’t see Kyuhyun, but she picks out his footsteps, getting louder and louder, until he leans next to the table and she’s able to see the curve of his back.
“Do you know that Sungmin mentions you at least once every ten minutes of conversation?” he asks, looking at her. “I counted once.” Sooyoung doesn’t move. “It’s hard not to feel like you know someone when you hear so much about them. It was…hard not to fall in love with you when he loved you so much.”
“What’s your point?” She asks, irritated.
“That’s why,” he answers. “I was thinking about it while you were out.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t have much to say anymore, at least, nothing to say to him. “What are you…going to do now?”
Kyuhyun sighs, pushing himself off the table. He’s quickly out of Sooyoung’s line of sight, but she hears him slowly pick up metal, then set it down, then pick it up again, as if debating something in his mind. He returns to his place by her side, and it’s only then that she can see the knife. “I’m going to kill you.” he says, looking anywhere in the room but her.
Sooyoung’s heart stops, as if submitting to her fate, and she tries to think of escape routes but her mind goes blank, repeating Sungmin, Sungmin, over and over. Finally she rattles the table, causing Kyuhyun to jump off and the knife to hit the floor, but she doesn’t have the force to knock the table on its side. “What’s that going to accomplish?” she yells, and when he says nothing, she continues. “They’ll find you and arrest you and Sungmin will never-“
“Do you honestly think I would do this if I thought I’d get caught?” he yells, squeezing her wrist until she calms. “I’m not one of those action movie villains that records shit and leaves the tape where someone can find it.”
“But what’s in it for you?” she asks, panting. “You want me, wouldn’t killing me get in the way of that?”
He shakes his head. “There’s no way for me to have you, not the way I want you, so ensuring that no one else can have you is the next best thing.”
Sooyoung tries to shake the table again, but Kyuhyun holds her down, more forcefully this time, and when she sees the proximity of his knife to her flesh she freezes instantly. “That’s…that’s faulty logic,” she stammers.
“It makes perfect sense.”
She shakes her head vigorously. “Couldn’t you just…watch me?”
“I’ve tried that,” he says, loosening his grip on her as he moves, climbing atop her, his head now just above hers. “It’s not good enough.” He moves down quickly and locks her in a kiss, and when she desperately tries to move her head away he holds it still. His lips, moving across hers, feel slimy and wrong, and she closes her eyes and prays for something, anything to distract her. She pictures Sungmin at the piano, Sungmin singing for her birthday, Sungmin taking her for a boat ride in the summer, but then she’s jarred from it all with a sharp pain in her hand. She opens her eyes, Kyuhyun’s mouth still pressed to hers, and screams when she sees blood dripping from a long, deep cut in her left wrist to the floor. He sits up immediately, and when he passes the knife from one hand to the other Sooyoung knows what’s happened.
In her mind, she shouts things at him-You’re a monster, the police will be on their way, how can you do this to your roommate, your friend-but none of it forms words or sounds, and she sits petrified. Kyuhyun’s still looking her straight in the eye, and he starts to sing then, a soft hum evolving into mumbled words. Sungmin sings for comfort, for release; she wonders if Kyuhyun has the humanity in him to be so disturbed.
“Hold your head up, you silly girl,” He slits her right wrist with his eyes shut, propping her head up with his free hand. “Look what you’ve done…”
Sooyoung closes her eyes again, imagining the homemade (in reality, he’d hired a friend) dinner Sungmin served her on this table, the way his lips curved into a smile when she took her first bite. She feels the knife being dragged across her torso, Kyuhyun’s hand trembling, and imagines it’s her boyfriend again, reaching up to wipe sauce from her cheek. “Take a good look, you’re bound to see, that you and me were meant to be for each other,” The knife punctures her throat, deeper, deeper, and Sooyoung doesn’t find the willpower to scream. “Silly girl,” Kyuhyun’s voice cracks on the last syllable, and he drops the knife on the floor and leaves her, walking into the kitchen. She considers looking at him, look to see if there’s any guilt on his face, but she doesn’t, instead picturing Sungmin that evening in Starbucks.
“I might understand now, why someone might be stupid enough to fall in love with you.”
As hard as she tries to block it out, she can still hear Kyuhyun singing, can still remember the feeling of his lips on hers. Was Sungmin warning her? She wonders, suddenly, if Kyuhyun’s right, if it really is her fault she’s dying on his dining room table. She sees Sungmin getting the news and winces. I’m sorry, she whispers, overdue tears running down her face, I’m so, so, sorry.
“Martha, my dear, you have always been my inspiration, please…be good to me, Martha my love, don’t forget me, Martha my dear.”
Kyuhyun finishes the last line, his hands still shaking, and looks back through the doorway out to the table. As the apartment falls silent, Sooyoung considers opening her eyes again, but her heart stops before the thought can finish.
Author: stimmingskanone
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sungmin/Sooyoung, one-sided!Sooyoung/Kyuhyun
Warnings: Explicit character murder. :|
Word Count: 2,680
Genre: Thriller? Creeper!fic?
Summary: He touches her shoulder lightly, and she freezes again. "There’s something you should know."
Across the living room of the apartment is a table covered in photo frames; there’s a red one in the middle with the two of them, in a suit and dress on Valentine’s Day, and Sooyoung keeps her eyes fixed on it, body still, breaths slow. She mouths his name (Sungmin) as she hears the baseball bat crash one, two, three times into the ground, obliterating her only connection to the outside world, to him. It’s not until the bat is quietly set down and the remains are pushed away with a shoe that she flinches, expecting more. Silence unnerves Sooyoung the most, and Kyuhyun has always been too quiet for her. She turns back to him slowly, looking up at him from under her bangs.
“I just…I just wanted to call him.”
Kyuhyun stares pointedly at the locked door, and then back at her. “There’s no need for that.”
She looks closer, searches for signs in his face, but he’s stoic, the way he’s always been around her. Sooyoung doesn’t understand how a human being can be so emotionless, so consistent, but perhaps he’s not human after all, considering what he’s doing. “Girlfriends usually call their boyfriends, you know,” she says, nodding anxiously as he approaches, “When there’s a family emergency.”
He touches her shoulder lightly, and she freezes again. “There’s something you should know.”
Sooyoung first meets Kyuhyun on a Sunday afternoon when she walks to Sungmin’s apartment in her nicest dress and relieves him from his thesis with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, but she hardly registers him in her mind that day, their “introduction” not even enough to warrant a strong first impression. Her boyfriend calls her a loser for taking the subway across town and then walking the extra distance, but he smiles at her between spoonfuls, clearly appreciative. “You may be loud,” he says, “But at least you’re useful.”
“You’re just as loud as me,” Sooyoung retorts, sticking her tongue out. Their relationship works like this, a strange mixture of affection and mockery. “But you don’t have any redeeming qualities, you’re just old.”
“I’ve got connections,” Sungmin says, smiling sweetly.
She laughs at that, high and bubbly. “Connections with who, the Gelato Mafia?”
He pouts for a moment, but then uses his spoon, covered in ice cream, to point behind him triumphantly. “No, Kyuhyun’s going to be rich.”
She pauses to connect the name with a face; she can’t. “Who are you talking about?” she asks, frowning. “Is this another one of your imaginary friends?”
Sungmin smacks her with the spoon and she grimaces, half-melted ice cream running down her shoulder. “No, he’s my roommate,” he says, and points to a man with his back to them, leaning over a laptop in intense concentration. “He skipped two grades when he was younger, and he still breezes through classes. His major’s useful too, unlike some people I could mention.”
“Oh.” She gives Kyuhyun more attention now, noticing just how different he is from Sungmin; his hair, uncombed, almost grazes his shoulders, his clothes are black and baggy and unremarkable. When she confirms that he has headphones in and can’t hear her (and therefore can’t judge her ignorance), she asks, “Why haven’t I seen him before?”
Sungmin shrugs. “He doesn’t like noise.”
She sees Kyuhyun a few more times after that, when she visits on weekends and comes over for dinner, but their stiff, polite conversations are irrelevant, as far as she knows, to anyone’s life.
Sooyoung is speechless, for the first time in years, when he tells her. She blinks, lets her jaw drop, and shakes her head slowly, still trying to comprehend his words, before she can finally force a one-word response.
“Why?”
Kyuhyun frowns. “Do you realize what you’re asking me for?” he snaps. “A reason for the most irrational thing in the world?”
“Do you even know me?” she blurts, suddenly angry.
“Well, you’re loud and feisty and infectious-“
“I didn’t want an answer,” she says, seething and forming her hands into fists.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” he replies, glaring. She shivers, waiting for him to explode, to punch her or even pick up the bat again, but he stands still, eyes fixated on hers. “I’m not Sungmin.”
Sooyoung doesn’t have an answer for that; for all the fear he’s commanding from her, the phone she’s going to make him replace, she still can’t help but feel a small, lingering shred of sympathy. “No, you’re not,” she agrees, shifting her weight.
Kyuhyun turns away from her as she speaks, walking to his desk and opening the first drawer. Sooyoung watches, confused, as he pulls out a box and walks toward her again, steps slow and calculated. He drums shaky fingers on the box, sighing. “Do you really love him?”
“Would I put up with him if I didn’t?”
His smile is crooked. “True, true,” he says. “So then…this”-and he glances at the box, just for a fleeting moment-“is the only way for us.”
Sooyoung cocks her head. “I don’t think you understand, I won’t-“
The box is open before she can react, one arm holding her still, the other shoving a rag in her face. Sooyoung gasps before her body falls limp, submissive, too early to hear Kyuhyun’s soft whisper in her ear, to feel his lips press against the side of her face.
Of the boyfriends Sooyoung’s had in her life, Sungmin certainly hasn’t been the kindest or the most suave; on the contrary, he mocks her voice and calls her names, but there’s something infectious about his personality that keeps her completely infatuated. He’s thrilling, unlike many of the people she’s known, if only because of his penchants for rule-bending and weekly surprises. It’s his spontaneity that makes him, but even she doesn’t expect him to come to her window at midnight in the middle of the week, dragging her into the Starbucks he works at after hours. She sits on the floor behind the counter, watching him as he runs around, checking for ingredients and turning on the smallest light he can find. He sighs victoriously and then turns back to her, kneeling so that they’re face to face.
“Everything’s here,” he says, grinning. “What do you want?”
She laughs. “A mocha frappuccino, I don’t drink anything else.”
Sungmin rolls his eyes and pushes himself up, grabbing the table to keep him upright. He makes a simple latte for himself first, but it’s a quick process, and he stretches his arms out to make Sooyoung’s creation. He works slower than he does during hours, mixing the ingredients just so and daintily decorating her whipped cream mountain with chocolate chips and swirls of sauce. He sticks the little green straw in carefully, so not to destroy the artwork, and sets it on the floor next to her. “There you go, you girl,” He grabs his latte and sits across from her. “Grown-ups drink coffee,”
“Maybe,” she says, licking whipped cream off her fingers. “But this tastes better.”
“Hold still.” Sungmin says, and reaches a hand out to her face, running his thumb across her nose. “You’re getting whipped cream everywhere. I don’t want to have to clean this place up again because of you and your frilly girl drinks.”
“Maybe I’ll just spill it.”
“I’ll kill you.”
Sooyoung smiles, the threat never truly being serious, and lets her eyes wander around the store. She wonders, for a minute, if he’ll get in trouble for this, but she figures he’s probably not concerned, and he’d laugh at her if she asked, anyway.
Sungmin opens his mouth to speak then, but then he closes it, running a hand through his hair. Sooyoung raises an eyebrow, sipping her drink, and when he does it again, she makes clear eye contact. He twitches and looks away, and her eyes narrow, questioning him. They sit still like this for what seems like hours, the only calm she’s ever had to experience around him. Silence unnerves her more than anything, particularly when it’s someone as vocal as him.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, finally, when she can’t take it anymore. “You drag me halfway across the city at midnight and then you yell at me not to make a mess, and now you won’t even talk to me.”
Sungmin looks up at her, sighing. “I might understand now,” he says, quietly, and she almost misses it entirely, “Why someone would be stupid enough to fall in love with you.”
She’s too shocked by his spontaneous seriousness to respond at first, staring into her drink. When she hears him get up to leave, she reaches out for his pant leg, pulling him back down. “Stop. I…I love you too, Sungmin.”
His expression immediately brightens, and he sits down again, smirking at her. “Of course you do,” he says, sipping his latte. “I’m flawless.”
Sooyoung rolls her eyes, scooping up whipped cream to smear in his hair. “I wouldn’t have said that if you were, you know.”
“Really?” he asks, failing to notice her handiwork. “Then I’m not the perfect boyfriend?” He pokes her stomach, pouting; Sooyoung does the same when she looks down to see latte-tinted whipped cream in the middle of her shirt. Digging her fingers into her cup, she shoves her hand, now holding the remains of her whipped cream mountain, in his face, and he retreats to the other end of the counter with a squeal. “Hey, cut that out, I broke into Starbucks for you.”
She laughs and crawls over to him, resting her head on his chest. “Don’t look so upset,” she says. “I’d rather date someone I don’t feel guilty about attacking anyway.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles, and Sooyoung wordlessly decides to sleep, her coffee abandoned on the other side of the room. Sungmin doesn’t wake her up.
She can’t feel her hair on her shoulders when she comes to, nor can she stretch her body up to look back at the frame she’d focused on earlier, struggling to break her limbs from their apparent bounds. With some observation, she realizes she’s lying on Sungmin’s dinner table, her hair hanging off one of the ends. She can’t see Kyuhyun, but she picks out his footsteps, getting louder and louder, until he leans next to the table and she’s able to see the curve of his back.
“Do you know that Sungmin mentions you at least once every ten minutes of conversation?” he asks, looking at her. “I counted once.” Sooyoung doesn’t move. “It’s hard not to feel like you know someone when you hear so much about them. It was…hard not to fall in love with you when he loved you so much.”
“What’s your point?” She asks, irritated.
“That’s why,” he answers. “I was thinking about it while you were out.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t have much to say anymore, at least, nothing to say to him. “What are you…going to do now?”
Kyuhyun sighs, pushing himself off the table. He’s quickly out of Sooyoung’s line of sight, but she hears him slowly pick up metal, then set it down, then pick it up again, as if debating something in his mind. He returns to his place by her side, and it’s only then that she can see the knife. “I’m going to kill you.” he says, looking anywhere in the room but her.
Sooyoung’s heart stops, as if submitting to her fate, and she tries to think of escape routes but her mind goes blank, repeating Sungmin, Sungmin, over and over. Finally she rattles the table, causing Kyuhyun to jump off and the knife to hit the floor, but she doesn’t have the force to knock the table on its side. “What’s that going to accomplish?” she yells, and when he says nothing, she continues. “They’ll find you and arrest you and Sungmin will never-“
“Do you honestly think I would do this if I thought I’d get caught?” he yells, squeezing her wrist until she calms. “I’m not one of those action movie villains that records shit and leaves the tape where someone can find it.”
“But what’s in it for you?” she asks, panting. “You want me, wouldn’t killing me get in the way of that?”
He shakes his head. “There’s no way for me to have you, not the way I want you, so ensuring that no one else can have you is the next best thing.”
Sooyoung tries to shake the table again, but Kyuhyun holds her down, more forcefully this time, and when she sees the proximity of his knife to her flesh she freezes instantly. “That’s…that’s faulty logic,” she stammers.
“It makes perfect sense.”
She shakes her head vigorously. “Couldn’t you just…watch me?”
“I’ve tried that,” he says, loosening his grip on her as he moves, climbing atop her, his head now just above hers. “It’s not good enough.” He moves down quickly and locks her in a kiss, and when she desperately tries to move her head away he holds it still. His lips, moving across hers, feel slimy and wrong, and she closes her eyes and prays for something, anything to distract her. She pictures Sungmin at the piano, Sungmin singing for her birthday, Sungmin taking her for a boat ride in the summer, but then she’s jarred from it all with a sharp pain in her hand. She opens her eyes, Kyuhyun’s mouth still pressed to hers, and screams when she sees blood dripping from a long, deep cut in her left wrist to the floor. He sits up immediately, and when he passes the knife from one hand to the other Sooyoung knows what’s happened.
In her mind, she shouts things at him-You’re a monster, the police will be on their way, how can you do this to your roommate, your friend-but none of it forms words or sounds, and she sits petrified. Kyuhyun’s still looking her straight in the eye, and he starts to sing then, a soft hum evolving into mumbled words. Sungmin sings for comfort, for release; she wonders if Kyuhyun has the humanity in him to be so disturbed.
“Hold your head up, you silly girl,” He slits her right wrist with his eyes shut, propping her head up with his free hand. “Look what you’ve done…”
Sooyoung closes her eyes again, imagining the homemade (in reality, he’d hired a friend) dinner Sungmin served her on this table, the way his lips curved into a smile when she took her first bite. She feels the knife being dragged across her torso, Kyuhyun’s hand trembling, and imagines it’s her boyfriend again, reaching up to wipe sauce from her cheek. “Take a good look, you’re bound to see, that you and me were meant to be for each other,” The knife punctures her throat, deeper, deeper, and Sooyoung doesn’t find the willpower to scream. “Silly girl,” Kyuhyun’s voice cracks on the last syllable, and he drops the knife on the floor and leaves her, walking into the kitchen. She considers looking at him, look to see if there’s any guilt on his face, but she doesn’t, instead picturing Sungmin that evening in Starbucks.
“I might understand now, why someone might be stupid enough to fall in love with you.”
As hard as she tries to block it out, she can still hear Kyuhyun singing, can still remember the feeling of his lips on hers. Was Sungmin warning her? She wonders, suddenly, if Kyuhyun’s right, if it really is her fault she’s dying on his dining room table. She sees Sungmin getting the news and winces. I’m sorry, she whispers, overdue tears running down her face, I’m so, so, sorry.
“Martha, my dear, you have always been my inspiration, please…be good to me, Martha my love, don’t forget me, Martha my dear.”
Kyuhyun finishes the last line, his hands still shaking, and looks back through the doorway out to the table. As the apartment falls silent, Sooyoung considers opening her eyes again, but her heart stops before the thought can finish.