If You Could See What I See [Chapter 66]
Chapter: 66/69?
Pairings: JaeMin, HoSu, JaeSu (past), YooMin bff
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama
Summary:
They both gave up on love, one thinking that he doesn’t deserve it and the other unable to let go of a painful past. As Changmin and Jaejoong slowly discover in the other something they weren’t aware they needed, they don’t know yet that their growing feelings will get tangled in a web of secrets. And that it may change everything in a merciless fight between truth and power.
LXVI. Are we coming closer to the night? … Does this world feel dizzy?
Crawling like children… me too, I’m shaking a little.
Park Yoochun is dead.
He doesn’t feel. Doesn’t think. His heart is frozen, sleeping under a thick blanket of snow. It doesn’t matter anymore if there are still feelings, because they turned sluggish and colorless. It doesn’t mean anything even if he still moves or cries. His arms, hands, tears; they don’t mean anything anymore. Nothing does.
Park Yoochun is dead, he keeps telling himself.
It’s the only way for him to resist and make it bearable. They can’t hurt a desensitized body. They can’t harm an existence that was wiped out already. They won’t break through the impenetrable wall of death. It’s a line they won’t cross.
It’s silent inside. White. He gathered every fragment of life and feeling here, and concealed them amidst cotton clouds so that he wouldn’t be able to retrieve them himself. He lost reasons and memories, he forgot how it was when he was still alive, and the temptation of surrendering disappeared ever since he buried the words they wanted him to say.
It’s silent inside. There’s no tiring hope and no vain struggle, no wrenching desire to exist and no need to strain his body to make it go one heartbeat further. He left already, hollow and cold, and shrank into the safe cocoon of his own death.
It’s not because of the pain, no. Not their words. Not their threats. Not their fists.
It’s because they just won’t let it end. They’ll stretch his last hours for as long as they want, and take the final moment away from him. They will steal his death on top of his life. They’ll make it a forever of suffering and despair, and offer him a full stop only after he hands over to them what he hid deep inside. He can’t let them have it, but he can’t face the idea of a never-ending agony either.
So Park Yoochun cheated, and he decided to be dead without letting them know. It doesn’t matter what they do of him now, because he’s not here anymore. Everything they want is already way out of their reach.
His body doesn’t feel. His mind doesn’t think.
It doesn’t change anything when he opens his eyes, since they reveal darkness.
Shadows, actually. There is a source of light, somewhere above him, but he doesn’t dare to face what could remind him that his eyes can still see. He tries to convince himself that the warm whisper that brushes past him regularly isn’t the one of his own breaths, but that he’s just imagining it. Just like the steady beating of his heart. Just like the way his body feels broken in every possible way.
It’s silent inside.
Unblemished.
Whole.
It’s winter inside.
They didn’t manage to bruise an ocean of silky peace and hollow whiteness. It’s still pure there. Still safe. As unmoving as death, and that’s where Park Yoochun took refuge. He doesn’t know for how long he’s been there, but he remembers how he found the only remaining shelter, the last place where he could possibly escape, and it was inside… somewhere inside of him.
He remembers the flight, in brief flashes of feelings and streets. Loneliness. The night. The wait, nerve-racking. Knowing he’d be caught. Hiding again, and feeling them come closer. Counting days. The cold. A sudden rush of fear, and helpless tears in the dark. The desire to go back in time. Fleeing. Flying. Counting hours. Running, and finding all doors closed. When the last light of hope went out. When even willpower faltered. Counting minutes. Trapped. Terror, unknown, and blindness. Discarding the pathetic handful of remaining seconds.
A short moment of struggle, as vain as desperate, and nearly immediately the realization that he wasn’t strong enough. That he was too alive now. That he loved too much and cherished too deeply. That he had something to lose or protect, and that it made him weak. That he wasn’t invulnerable anymore.
That’s why Park Yoochun died.
He died, and brought everything he loves along with him.
It happened as he sensed his strengths reaching their limits, as he started fearing that he wouldn’t be able to resist much longer to a stabbing rain of mixed questions and pain. He isn’t sure how he did it, but he let go of everything they could hurt in him; betrayed his own abused body, killed the very reasons why he had to undergo this, and destroyed all the feelings attached to them. It was abrupt and instinctive, but in the blink of an eye, Park Yoochun ceased to be a tormented prisoner weakly clinging onto evanescent promises, and became a refugee in a white haven.
They haven’t heard a word from him from that moment on.
He screamed, of course. He cried. When the pain becomes too much he has no other choice than to open his mouth, and let an echo of suffering leave his tortured body, but it’s just sounds. Torn and miserable, but sounds only, and nothing more than that. He didn’t speak. The words are dying behind incoherent cries and that’s where they will disappear, no matter what they do.
And he isn’t alone.
Yoowhan has been here with him all along. Yoowhan has always been here, and when Yoochun was on the verge of breaking, it’s the ghost of a little brother who showed him the only way out. It’s Yoowhan who welcomed him in the soothing embrace of unfeeling whites, and who helped him build that wall around what he wanted to protect. It became the two of them again and it felt exactly like before, when they believed that nothing and no one would ever manage to come in between them.
Sometimes it’s a word, the clear phantom of a ‘hyung’ that crosses his thoughts gaily like a runaway bird, resounding in his empty head with the same strength as a clap of joyous thunder, and that vanishes leaving stars in its wake. It can be a smile, wide yet quiet, way too wise for a kid his age. It can also be eyes, dark and curious, and eagerly drinking life without realizing how they are radiating hope in return. But most often, it’s just a feeling.
The imprint that Yoowhan left inside, and that will never disappear. The desire to be strong for someone else. The need to be needed. The conviction that whatever he does, if he does it for him then it just can’t go wrong.
Him.
Him, and that’s usually when Yoowhan’s memory shifts so that there’ll be a vacant space by his side, the exact right shape and feel for another person. And Yoochun can erase everything he is, but the empty places still remain where there used to be priceless memories.
That’s usually when he starts crying. Tears don’t mean anything anymore except from these ones, because they are cold yet warm, as new as melting snow. That’s when it falls upon him with a violence he’s never prepared to face; too ardent, too immense, too complete.
A heartbreaking sensation of longing and love, desperate and warm, and grateful, and anxious. It rises and submerges his heart, trying to make it stir, wanting it to wake up, and Yoochun’s whole being starts craving for another smile. For another ‘hyung’, different eyes, other feelings.
And every time… every single time he has to erase it all, because it could bring him back to life. Because it could give him back everything they took, and rebuild everything they destroyed without even trying.
But he needs to be dead, or he won’t be able to protect anything.
He believes he sank deep enough now. He’s too far for them to ever find a way to rekindle in him that human instinct to survive. He managed to quench it, and Park Yoochun fooled them all and killed himself. It’s just in his own head, maybe, but it works.
He drinks when they give him water, eats whatever food they feel like leaving for him, but those are his only concessions to life. It’s what he needs to do to keep a heavenly landscape of snowy hills preserved in the core of him, so that Yoowhan can visit him here. Yoowhan liked snow so much. Yoowhan’s footprints are everywhere, tracing paths in immaculate whiteness, guiding him through a maze of confused roads but never letting him rest. It’s like he doesn’t want Yoochun to stop walking. It’s like he’s bringing him along on a journey that has no aim, where the only purpose is to keep travelling.
Don’t stop, and another heartbeat reverberates inside.
And Yoochun has no choice but to follow the traces Yoowhan left behind. He wants to find him. Wants to see him walk, steady on his two feet. Yoowhan liked snow so much.
Don’t stop, and it’s easy to focus on that gentle order.
Yoowhan is near now, but he’s still going too fast. Running too far, and Yoochun doesn’t want that place to disappear before he catches up with him. Sees him. Sees his brother standing on his legs, and playing in the snow.
A noise.
He jerks a little, unconsciously straining his ears.
Voices.
The only warning he usually gets, and it instantly drags him out of a white wholeness. Foreign words shatter peace as they turn louder, making the picture tremble and crack at terrifying speed, tainting it with hungry black spots. Already fading, already withered, pieces of dreams disappearing in an empty well and twirling like fragments of fallen leaves.
Yoochun lets go regretfully and watches them vanish in bottomless darkness, still wrapped in vaporous veils of white. He watches, and waits till they fell deep enough… till they’re reduced to a tiny spark of silver shining feebly amidst the hollow space of death. Once more unattainable. Only then does he make the tremendous effort needed to come back to himself, opening his eyes with difficulty before he can anchor his emerging consciousness to a now familiar setting.
The hard wooden floor. The livid glow cast in the room by an opening that was probably meant to be a window, except that there’s no glass. It’s too small to really lighten the shadows around, but sometimes it exhales a cold blow of wind, as if to remind him that there’s life outside. Real, but unreachable. The door, floating menacingly in darkness on the other side of the room.
He dragged his tired body as far from it as he could, because Yoochun dreads what invariably happens whenever that door opens. Being just a few meters away hardly makes him feel safe, but it does leave a few seconds for the initial shock of panic to lessen every time they come to get him.
That’s for his surroundings, but they barely feel real now. They are not comforting, they are not scary either. Just neutral.
It’s where they discard his body when they are done with him, a place to wait, the transition between interminable minutes of merciless beating, and the white oblivion he finds in a soothing illusion. Yoochun simply switches from one to the other: what’s inside and how it keeps him sane, what’s on the other side of that door and how he must be dead there, and the rest… the rest is the worn-out envelop of flesh that he’s using as a buffer.
Drinking. Eating. Crawling. Hunger became familiar, barely noticeable amidst countless reasons to hurt, but Yoochun still isn’t used to the tormenting company of thirst. Weakness became permanent, lack of food, lack of will, lack of everything, and it robbed him from the strength to fight back. Even a steady look. A defying stare. Even the instinctive urge to protect his face or curl on himself when blows and kicks start pouring.
He’s starting to feel like a mere combination of limbs and sounds that lets itself be used and abused, and Yoochun thinks that maybe he isn’t quite human anymore. That he is even more dead than he believes himself to be, at least in his mind and soul.
Because pain is everywhere, leaving powerful traces and marking his body, but as weird as it seems, it’s never too much. Pain is always present, but not incapacitating. Merciless, but not strong enough to prevent him from recovering. They don’t want him to die. They managed to make it feel unbearable while letting him know that they were holding back, and that it was nothing compared to what they could do.
It’s not exactly a comforting thought given how awful he actually feels, but Yoochun is aware by now that his body didn’t undergo any serious damage, with the exception of his left arm. This one is broken and it has been hanging uselessly by his side for a while now, several days he supposes, since it’s impossible for him to keep track of time. He doesn’t know whether they did it intentionally or not, but he still isn’t used to the searing pain that shakes his whole frame whenever they turn their attention to it.
The voices grew louder, came nearer, and now they are close enough for him to hear footsteps.
Yoochun instinctively brings his left arm to his chest using his other hand, sitting with his back to the wall and staring at the door. Eyes fixed on the handle, conflicting emotions quietly battling within in spite of how hard he’s trying not to think. Praying that they aren’t coming for him, that they’ll leave him alone for a moment longer. That maybe they’ll forget him here. That it’s just a very, very, very real-looking nightmare.
He hates those few endless seconds of miserable hope, and how pathetic they make him feel at the worst moment, just before they arrive.
They are right on the other side of the door, and Yoochun’s heart is trying to run away from his chest. It’s terrified and it’s struggling to attract his attention, like a child sobbing as loudly as possible to make his parents come and comfort him. It’s a pitiful mess of feelings; begging, threatening, pleading, crying, but he doesn’t care. Eyes wide. Right hand clasped over his left arm. Tensed and shaking, his body conditioned to fear and hurt, but it doesn’t matter. ‘Dead’, his mind is already chanting.
Dead. Park Yoochun is dead and they can’t hurt him.
Can’t break him.
Can’t kill him.
He hears the key, hears a telltale crack, sees an ominous ray of light that burns his eyes, and Yoochun abruptly pushes consciousness deep inside. Forcibly erases everything he is, everything he feels, and abandons his body to its fate, letting it fight alone against what will come now. Maybe it’s the last time, a part of him can’t help but hope. Maybe they will finally put an end to this.
Voices and steps.
Harsh lights pouring, and Yoochun closes his eyes.
He remembers that he used to try at first. To hit them, or at least to resist. To answer their words with a cold stare. He doesn’t know what he was trying to prove; that they’d never break him, maybe. Now it’s just a waste of energy. A pitiful show not even worth being called pretence, and he doesn’t bother anymore. They broke him, they obliged him to let go of everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, dignity, pride and courage. They gnawed, peeled, scraped, and he can’t even fight back using what remains of him because they’d break it too.
It never seems completely real until they lay hands on him.
He manages to suppress the first cry of pain when they grab his arms roughly, but not the second one, as they force him to stand and pull on his broken arm. It’s okay. Cries don’t mean anything anymore, including the mute sobs of terror violently shaking his heart, the ones he’s so careful not to become aware of. He’s dead, and he doesn’t have to feel ashamed anymore.
Doesn’t have to feel hurt when a hand harshly tugs his hair backwards in a mock attempt to comb them, and a small laugh rises.
“He isn’t very presentable, right?”
Noshiro.
“Looks like shit, you mean.”
Noshiro and Ashitaka. He knows their names. They didn’t bother to hide them from him, and it’s only one proof amidst countless others that he isn’t supposed to get out of there alive.
“Smells like it too.”
Doesn’t have to feel ashamed.
Doesn’t have to feel hurt.
Eyes closed tightly, head hanging low, and Yoochun doesn’t have to care about what they are saying. A warm blow of air against his cheek and a cold whisper right against his ear, amused yet detached, and he can picture the hint of a scornful smile on Noshiro’s thin lips.
“Make an effort, will you? We prepared a surprise, just for you.”
Doesn’t have to listen to their words, though he’s aware that there’s nothing good to expect from them being so obviously joyful. Eager, or expectant, or whatever it is.
Yoochun lets them drag him along a familiar route, and it used to feel long at first but now that he recognizes every corner and door, it seems terribly short to him. They always bring him to the same room. It’s always the same person asking questions, the one called Yamada, and it’s always the same odious softness in his voice.
The dreadful contrast between a gentle admonition, a ‘you know this isn’t necessary’, then a graceful move of his hand and the upsurge of violence that follows. How there always seems to be at least five or six men around, watching, laughing, and adding their share of insults. The questions. He knows all of them by heart, and they’d torment him in his moments of respite as well if Yoochun wasn’t dead already. He believes he managed to forget all the answers.
They are walking fast and he’s already out of breath. Even breathing became painful. Maybe he has one or several cracked ribs, maybe not. He can’t be sure when it feels like he doesn’t have a single part of his body left intact, with the exception of his head. ‘Not the face’, Yamada said the first time, and Yoochun would be thankful if he didn’t know that the only reason was to make sure that he wouldn’t pass out too quickly during questioning sessions.
It’s the last hallway, then a fateful door, and he’s ready now.
“You’ll be very happy in a few seconds, you’ll see.”
Doesn’t have to listen.
“You think he will?”
Doesn’t have to care.
“Sure. So happy he’ll cry, right Yoochun-ah?”
Doesn’t have to answer, because ‘Yoochun’ isn’t him anymore.
A rough shove pushing him forward and making him lose his balance, and the only thing that prevents him from falling is their grip onto his arms. A burning flash of pain, the nauseating awareness that they pulled on his broken arm purposefully, and he grits his teeth not to scream. Eyes closed. Head down. Defeated yet victorious, because he’s dead already.
They cross the door and now it will be the fire of questions. Then silence. The sickening care in a cruel voice, a small move of the hand. The first blow. The second. The moment when he’ll fall on the ground, and then minutes turning into hours as words and pain will get tangled up, inseparable.
“…Yoochun?”
Screams and tears as the only answer, and maybe it’s not what they want, but his body needs an outlet and this one is perfect. Screams are wordless. Tears don’t mean anything anymore. Just salted water, a meaningless flow triggered by pain, and they know exactly how to push on the right buttons to make his body writhe and throb as they wish.
“Y-Yoochun…”
An eternal moment of darkness, then he’ll be back to that other room and detach himself from everything. Sink back into himself. Hide in that white infinity where they don’t belong, and believe that it was the last time and that he’ll be allowed to stay there forever. There are different ways to be dead. A ridiculous puppet letting itself be tortured on the floor. A ghost searching for another in a desert of snow.
“…Hyung.”
He freezes.
Stops breathing. Stops thinking. Stops everything, and he knows that his heart stopped too, and there, this is it… he’s dying. Dying, for real, because he’s being swept away by an immense wave of pain that he can’t explain, since it doesn’t come from them. Collapsing from the inside, walls crumbling with nowhere to run.
“H-Hyung…”
Tears. It’s a voice in tears, a name crying, and he’s dead… he’s dead and he doesn’t have to listen but it’s too late already. It burns… it burns and unfolds, too bright, blinding. His eyes are fixed on the floor but ‘hyung’ is printed behind them, and he can’t erase it. It wasn’t Yoowhan. It wasn’t happy.
He thinks he’s falling.
He chokes on air, realizing belatedly that tears are streaming down his face, hot and messy, rushing out to get free before he can repress them. He doesn’t know how to. Can’t hold back. Doesn’t control anything, feelings are breaking loose and he doesn’t know what to do of them. Emotions so full they are overwhelming, aimless and unattached, now completely foreign and he can’t stifle them. Doesn’t recognize them. Doesn’t know how to make it stop, how to crush his heart and make it cold again because it’s not supposed to be beating that loud, it shouldn’t be that big, it shouldn’t feel too small.
It was a voice… that voice, and it was crying. It was saying that name, his name, and it was I need you and don’t leave me, and he can’t… never could, he just has to, and he raises his head. Doesn’t even have the time to register what he saw before a torn cry shakes his whole frame and his eyes become blurred with a new flow of tears.
Crashing.
Blood and fear, and he starts shaking his head left and right. Bruises and pain, and his heart feels on the verge of asphyxia. He’s shaking, snapping, yet he feels more real than he’s been in days. And he’d rather be dead… dead and gone, because it wasn’t just a name abruptly appearing in a place where it was never supposed to. There was the person saying it.
There was the person saying it, and panic soars up as that thought becomes clearer, as he starts registering what exactly his eyes are trying to show him. Impossible. It’s impossible and he crushes the idea, recoils from it with violent disbelief, because it just can’t be.
Too much.
He went through too much and it’s just his body giving in at last. Just his thoughts turning mad, his mind surrendering, sanity ripped to shreds. The tears on his face, the shattered breaths denying him air, the choked heartbeats shaking his chest… all of this are just the last throes of life, the first steps into death, and it’s normal it’d feel so painful. He’d like to be dead already, he’d like to be spared that last dreadful illusion, and he instinctively tries to make a step backwards.
He wants to run from it. To make it disappear.
“I suppose it’d be useless to ask if you know Shim Changmin here.”
Two syllables, and he knows he was right; it’ll be enough to bring back everything they took, and rebuild everything they destroyed.
He wants to avert his eyes but he can’t look away, horrified and eager. Sick fascination. Hungrily taking in every detail, while desperately wishing that they wouldn’t feel so real. He wants to flee, wants to run forward, wants to disappear in the bottomless gap that just appeared within. His heart opened raw and alive, trembling from head to feet, and he controls nothing. He’s going to throw up. He’d fall if they weren’t holding him so tight. He’d black out if he didn’t need to watch him so badly.
He just moved, a small step in his direction, and they already pulled him back. He staggered on his feet. Winced. Drew in a loud breath, and that’s when their gazes meet. Too wide, too hazy, too scared, and there are tears everywhere in the way. Nothing is right when Changmin cries, and it’s Yoochun’s duty to fix it. He feels his eyes widen in shock, feels his body harden against the hands keeping him still, and he finally realizes that this is Changmin.
That it’s blood on Changmin’s face, fear in Changmin’s eyes, bruises on Changmin’s skin, and Yoochun is running forward. Trying to. They are holding him and it hurts but he doesn’t care, never cared as less as now, because he needs to go. Anger, concern, the consuming fire of instincts and raw needs. They can’t understand, they can’t prevent him. He needs to fix it and make it alright because nothing is right when Changmin cries and it’s unbearable, that frightened look in eyes so dear.
“Let me-“
Yoochun stops as soon as he hears his own voice; the first words he said in days, and they sounded foreign. Powerless and empty.
He’s straining to wrench himself free, desperate to break their hold, painfully conscious that it’s nothing but a waste of energy yet he couldn’t care less. There’s blood on Changmin’s face, Changmin’s hands tied behind his back, silent tears continuously running down his cheeks… brown eyes staring at him like they refuse to believe what they’re seeing, distressed and hurt. He looks horribly fragile like this and Yoochun needs to be here, to tell him ‘I won’t leave’, to take him in his arms and shield him from the world.
He’s the only who can, and no one will take this away from him. From them.
A click.
Low, but telltale.
Yoochun immediately stops struggling and follows Changmin’s gaze, turning to Yamada before his eyes land on the man’s white hands. On a gun in them. A stunned heartbeat. Every coherent thought is wiped out in the blink of an eye, fear flaring inside his chest, words spilling before he can think about consequences.
“Let him go!”
The first thing that came to mind. He’s never been as scared of what they could do as now. A gun, Yamada’s hands, Changmin, and Yoochun can’t even move. Panic spread violently, howling petrifying maybes, and he can’t control it when the closest thing he has to a lucid thought is that Changmin shouldn’t even be here.
“Let him- let him go!!”
Aghast sounds that he can’t assemble. He’ll go crazy, mad… turn insane with terror if that gun remains here for just a second longer. He must do something, anything, end this, utterly helpless facing a situation too intolerable for him to fully apprehend. It’s Changmin, Changmin, and the reality of that is only starting to really dawn on him.
“He has nothing to do with this!!”
“It’s a bit too late for me to believe that.”
So light that it makes him want to scream. Yoochun’s eyes are flying madly between Changmin and the gun, thoughts running in circles, heart shouting deafening warnings that makes him unable to think and find a way to stop it, stop everything, make miracles happen or just say the right words.
“I’ll… I’ll tell you everything j-just…”
Crying.
“Let him go… p-please…”
Begging. It doesn’t make him feel weak or ashamed. He saw the flash of confused panic that crossed Changmin’s eyes when they landed on the gun, and Yoochun doesn’t need any other reason than this.
“I knew there’d be a way to make you more cooperative.”
An approving smile, and a gun dancing lazily in between long fingers. His gaze runs back to Changmin, and Yoochun wouldn’t be able to accept that this is really happening if it wasn’t for the expression on the younger man’s face. And he saw countless emotions there, but this one is alien. Dumb confusion mixed with denial and fear, and Changmin looks paralyzed, unable to detach his eyes from Yamada’s hands and what they are holding. Tears still shining on his cheeks but brown eyes wide and dry, like too shaken to cry, and Yoochun doesn’t realize at once that Yamada spoke again.
“Shim Changmin, the detectives, is there anyone else who knows about your searches?”
“I d-didn’t-“
He swallows. Obliges himself to breath, though it feels like he brought fire inside his lungs, not air.
“I didn’t tell Changmin”, Yoochun answers hastily, desperately wishing that they’ll hear the truth in his voice, “he… he doesn’t know, you can’t-“
He stops talking abruptly. Watches the gun rise like in slow motion, words dying in his throat as it halts midair, pointed right at Changmin. Changmin who looks like he has no idea of what’s happening at all, eyes fixed on the gun like he doesn’t understand what it is, but suddenly so pale he looks about to faint.
“Don’t-“
“This is your last chance”, Yamada interrupts him coldly, “I’ll know soon enough if your friend lied to us, since you are going to tell me the truth.”
“I’m not-“
“Shim Changmin, the detective office, anyone else?”
“No but-“
“Your parents?”
“N-No I-“
“Kim Jaejoong?”
“He-what…?”
Yoochun’s eyes didn’t leave Changmin’s face, and he wonders if it’s panic making him unable to think normally or if he’s missing something there. ‘Kim Jaejoong’ and the younger man’s eyes just filled with tears again, a smothered sob escaping his mouth before he presses his lips tightly together, looking away from him.
“I guess you didn’t lie on that point then”, Yamada comments, throwing a careless glance in Changmin’s direction before turning to him again, “the data you gathered about Hyakunincho, where it is?”
“It…”
Yoochun stops as he sees the calm, expectant look in the man’s eyes, and understanding abruptly dawns on him. He wonders if he could possibly feel even worse than now. It came down to this and it’s all his fault, but it’s not something he’ll be allowed to fix. He doesn’t have a choice. Yamada’s fingers are wrapped around a gun, steady and indifferent, and one of them would press a trigger with the same negligence as the one in his voice when he says that ‘you’re wasting my time’.
“I g-gave it to him…”
He bites on his lower lip, unable to stifle his heart’s cries of protests. He doesn’t have a choice. They know already… they know, and if he lies they’ll know it as well and Yoochun can’t afford… doesn’t want to think of what would happen next.
“Shim Changmin only?”
He nods, unable to talk. Words trapped in his heart, and eyes fixed on the gun not to look at Changmin. He doesn’t want to see the expression on his face. He just wants it to stop, wants that gun to vanish, wants Changmin safe and in his arms, and that last idea rises so abruptly that it erases every other thought. He suddenly feels cold. Terribly cold.
“Is it something like this?”
His eyes mechanically follow Yamada’s free hand, absentmindedly registering the fact that there’s something in it that wasn’t there before. Silver and round. A disk. They have it. It’s over, a distant part of his mind warns him sternly, but Yoochun can’t bring himself to care. He nods again, feeling incredibly empty.
That disk may have meant something before, but it lost all kind of importance. Now he wishes he’d have destroyed everything, and then maybe Changmin wouldn’t be here. He’d be safe. It’d be hell and nightmares and death altogether, but it’d be Yoochun alone dealing with it all, and it’d be bearable. Not like this. Not like the strangling awareness that it’d take one second and the slightest move for everything to end. Everything, and it terrifies him.
“Please…”
A quiet whisper, an unconscious move forward. Pointless, but obeying to the overwhelming urge to just be here. There’s only air between Changmin and a gun, and Yoochun can do nothing but stare. Say empty words about things that aren’t important, that he now hates as strongly as he clang onto them in the past, and if he could be here and remove an unspeakable threat… Just be here, where he’s supposed to, the hyung standing between Changmin and the world so that nothing will hurt him.
“Let m-me-“
“There’s no copy of this?”
Yamada waves the disk in the air, but he isn’t paying attention anymore. Too anxious, too tense, helpless yet burning with the consuming need to run forward.
Changmin started shaking visibly, and it feels as if that gun could break him simply by remaining here just a moment longer. Yoochun doesn’t know what it is, fear, exhaustion or pain, but he sees one of the men holding the younger man giving him a rough shake, as if to oblige him to get control back. Instead Changmin staggers on his feet, eyes turning distant and unfocused for a second or so before they clear again, and Yoochun forgets about questions and answers because something is wrong.
“Let him go…”
They are hurting him. Changmin is hurting and he can do nothing, and it’s like his whole life just became meaningless, losing sense and reasons, illusory lights and useless feelings.
“Answer my question.”
Yoochun doesn’t know what the question is. He wants Changmin safe, free, far. Even if he isn’t here to protect him, as long as that nightmarish scene ends and he can make believe that it never happened.
“Let him-“
A shot.
A scream, hoarse and ugly.
Yoochun’s voice was just wrenched away from his very soul, but all he can hear is another shout. Not his own. And he sees Changmin fall.
Freezes. Sinks, absolute terror blinding his whole being. Earsplitting thunder echoing inside his head. Mad… he’s mad, he wants to be mad. His heart slows down, brakes, stops, delirious and frantic, and time follows it… still then backwards, pounding so hard it hurts as seconds run again, a chaos of broken instants where senses are stuck in reverse until-
Another cry, halfway between a shout and a sob, and Yoochun struggles to get rid of the tears in his eyes. Straining to see, to hear, to grab a glimpse of reality again because there… there was a move, a whimper, and he forcibly holds back tears till his gaze finds brown eyes.
And Yoochun anchors the whole world to them, to the way they are moving, closing, blinking, open and alive… alive, and the next cry that leaves his mouth is made of relief so strong that it stabs his heart instead of healing it. It’s going fast now…
They are already holding him again.
Too fast.
Making him stand, ignoring wretched gasps and convulsive trembles. The only sound in the room is the one of Changmin’s breaths, ragged and full of tears, like he’s drowning, and Yoochun stops breathing just to hear it more clearly, in case his eyes would be deceiving him. He can’t stop looking, latching onto every sign of life, too scared to mind that there’s only pain here. Focusing entirely on a string of uncontrolled spasms, jerky breaths, the hot sheen of sweat and the smell of blood, and the predatory pressure of death. The dark stain growing right under Changmin’s knee.
Yoochun’s eyes remain fixed here, staring in mixed relief and horror as he progressively understands what actually happened, until a loud breath rises and ends with an aborted sob, tearing silence apart. He looks up at once, heart sinking inside his chest when he notices how hard Changmin is struggling not to scream, lips pressed hard and trembling, eyes closed tightly but unable to prevent tears from leaking out. And if he was pale before, now it’s as if all the blood was drained from his face; not a worrying white but a sickening grey.
“That was your last warning.”
Cold, this time. Not bothering to fake compassion.
Yoochun realizes with a pang of hysterical fear that Yamada is still holding the gun, still pointing it at Changmin, and he struggles frantically to retrieve the past minute. Find the question he couldn’t hear, answer it, fill silence with the words he refused to say for days, until they are satisfied and they let Changmin go. He tries to speak but not a single sound comes out, his voice failing him at the worst possible moment, and he startles violently when Yamada suddenly starts walking forward.
Towards Changmin. Closer. Nearer, and more, until there’s only an inch of air remaining between the gun and Changmin’s head. And closer, till cold metal presses against skin and the younger man opens his eyes slowly. And Yoochun finds them, meets them, sees the abrupt shift in brown irises and the way they freeze. Shocked. Dragged out of pain only to be forced into something incomparably darker, and it’s like each passing second is now killing the life in them.
“Did you make any copy of that disk?”
Yamada’s voice is back to its usual sweetness, and Yoochun can only shake his head. Once, twice, then repeatedly, unable to stop. His breathing quickens, stumbles; his eyes remain fixed on Changmin, silently begging him to keep looking at him because it feels like preserving that silent link is the only hope they’ve left.
“Did you hear from someone else what really happened at Hyakunincho?”
Still shaking his head, mechanically handing over to them cheap explanations that they probably think priceless. Yoochun doesn’t care. Changmin just closed his eyes, sagged, shrank, slipped from their hold before they roughly brought him up again. Another cry of pain, more tears, more blood, breaths turning into soft pants and body surrendering, slowly but surely.
“Why did you start searching?”
He manages to avert his gaze from Changmin for a split second, finding Yamada’s small eyes and recognizing the knowing light in them. The man is perfectly conscious that Yoochun will tell them everything they want at that point, but he still leans forward a little. Delicately removes a stray strand of hair stuck on Changmin’s damp forehead using the end of his gun, and smiles a little when the younger man instinctively recoils from him.
Another spasm, another cry as he involuntarily moves his leg, and Yoochun thinks he’s going to be sick. Aware that it wouldn’t take much for him to become literally crazy with fear, and that it’d only make things worse.
“There must a reason why you had suspicions, right?”
He knows that he shouldn’t answer. That they can’t know the truth. That’s it’s wrong. That it’s bad. His gaze travels back to the gun, still here, still attached to Changmin’s head and he doesn’t know anymore if it’s tying him to life or to death.
“My… my parents…”
He shouldn’t answer.
“They weren’t sure… they just… I heard them talk about it.”
Yoochun closes his eyes, resigned and empty. Waiting for the next question, for a shot, for a scream or another blow. Whichever it is. He wants it to be over. It’s just nervous tension keeping his body upright, the powerful effects of adrenaline and fear, and he knows they’ll cease as soon as something different happens, be it a good or a bad thing.
‘Good’ right now would be a pause. A respite. A moment of illusive freedom when he’d be allowed to go and bring Changmin into his arms. Dry his tears. Soothe his pain. Tell him sweet lies that ‘it’s alright’ and ‘I’m here now’.
‘Bad’ is way too dark and he doesn’t feel strong enough to face it.
“Where are your parents now?”
Wrong.
“Canada… they… they have friends there.”
It’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter anymore. He closed his eyes but he might as well have kept them open. Yoochun knows that whatever happens now, that moment will remain engraved in his mind. The image of Changmin with blood on his face and tears in his eyes, a gun pressed to his temple, oppressive fear filling all the space of the room around them, and hostile eyes watching with cruel detachment. Nothing can possibly be worse than that. Nothing. And it’s all his fault.
A light touch on his face, and Yoochun opens his eyes.
“See… it wasn’t that difficult.”
Yamada. He didn’t hear him come, but the man is right in front of him now. His heart twists painfully inside his chest and his gaze flies to Changmin’s frame, just a few steps away and yet unreachable. Breaths so low that they are barely audible now, but Yoochun can tell that it’s because he’s struggling not to cry.
Then the younger man turns his head slightly, a nearly imperceptible move, and opens his eyes to look straight at him. And he’d be completely unable to say what it was that crossed brown orbs just now. A poignant call for help, despair or unbearable pain, unless it was that indefinable sensation of mixed warmth and sadness, the one radiating from a ‘you and me’ when ‘you and me’ remains as the only shelter.
Maybe it was a bit of everything, maybe it was something else entirely, but when Changmin closes his eyes again, wincing as the man holding his right arm moves a little, the feeling still lingers. A connection, reliable and strong. And it gives Yoochun the strength to face Yamada, to look directly at his face, and forget his broken self.
“Let him go…”, he whispers once more, helplessness making his voice shake a little in spite of his efforts to make it sound steady.
“I don’t think so.”
Yamada throws a quick glance in Changmin’s direction, seemingly absorbed in his thoughts for a short moment before he nods to himself.
“But there are some things I need to do before we continue that talk”, the man adds calmly, only allowing the ghost of a smirk to pass over his lips when Yoochun tenses as he hears the last words, “and I believe you’ve a lot to say to your friend here.”
Of course, it’s just another of their tricks. In appearance giving them a moment of respite, but intending to listen to everything they’ll say. Wait till they retrieve a spark of hope to cling onto, and then, right at that moment, snatch it from them and re-break everything. And this time it’ll be ten times worse because during a foolish instant, they believed that they’d find a way to fight back.
It’s just another of their tricks, but already Noshiro and Ashitaka are making him turn around, dragging him out of the room, and he hears a loud whimper close that can only mean that Changmin is right behind him. And Yoochun’s eyes fill with tears, half-delirious with relief in spite of the pain, in spite of the heartrending cries that follow him all along on the way back, in spite of the piercing knowledge that it can only go worse from here.
Ten seconds later and he’s back to his dark room, and to the shadows lurking in corners. But this time he doesn’t crawl as far from the door as possible. This time, Yoochun doesn’t move from where he fell on the ground, eyes fixed on the rectangle of light outlined by the door, and on the people there. A short moment of wait, just the time needed for them to exchange a few words in Japanese before one of them cuts Changmin’s bonds, and another body lands next to his with a sharp cry of pain.
And Yoochun doesn’t think. Doesn’t even wait till they close the door behind them. Eyes blurred by countless tears, blindly searching for hands, arms, warmth, until his fingers find clothes. Shaking so hard he’s afraid to hurt him as he wraps his right arm around what must be Changmin’s waist, not attempting to make him sit up but tentatively coming closer instead. Leaning above him carefully, ignoring the throbbing pain in his broken arm. Terrified yet hopeful, desperate to hear a word that isn’t a scream, needing to see something that isn’t fear.
“Changmin-ah…”
It never seemed so fragile before, that name. And yet he saw him break and fall in many ways, countless times, but never before… never because of him. Never as true as actual bruises and blood, a shotgun and menaces.
“C-Changmin-ah…”
He stifles a small cry when something bumps against his broken arm, eyes opened wide in spite of tears, and finally… finally their gazes meet and it’s only the two of them, with nothing in between. Changmin’s eyes look darker than usual, bigger, deeper, maybe because of the dim lights or because of the storm of emotions raging in brown orbs usually so calm. It’s all for him, the mute strength radiating from a single look, keeping him speechless and spellbound and Yoochun wouldn’t be able to move even if he wanted to.
He’s scared.
Doesn’t know what to expect. He can’t promise that it’ll be alright. Can’t erase the past hours, or maybe the past weeks. Can’t protect him, can’t heal him, can do nothing but be here and it isn’t enough. It won’t be enough. It’ll just add emotional distress to physical torture, but he can’t bring himself to think about that now.
It’s a suspended moment of silence, heavy with unsaid words, charged with extreme tension. Yoochun can feel Changmin’s body tense close to his, straining against pain and anguish, probably clinging onto the last resources of willpower and on the verge of passing out. The younger man’s arms are lying at a weird angle on the floor on each side of his body, useless, since the other is probably still completely unable to move them, not yet. It’s dark but not enough to hide the ugly bruises already smearing his wrists, and Yoochun thinks with a pang of panic about the dark stain he saw earlier on his leg.
The shot.
The gun.
A vomit of crimson and cold blasts.
It’s not right. Nothing is, because a soft gasp just escaped Changmin’s lips as a few more tears started running down his face, and he doesn’t know why. He wants to tell him not to cry. That he’s here now. That they won’t hurt him anymore, never, not as long as he’s here to stop them, and it’s stupid but it’s the only way he knows. His right hand is trembling uncontrollably when he finally manages to let go of the other’s clothes to bring it to his face, touching his cheek lightly, careful… like a single touch would be enough to finish breaking him.
“Changmin-ah…”
Softer. Lower. Just ‘you and me’, he wants to say. Now it’s just you and me. You don’t have to be scared. You don’t have to hold back.
Yoochun doesn’t even know if he still has the right to say that kind of thing.
He doesn’t dare to think of how Changmin must feel, a crushing combination of incomprehension and terror and pain. He hopes that the younger man will simply blame him for it all. It won’t lessen the guilt, it won’t make him feel better, but maybe it-
“You’re alive…”
A shiver, lips pressed tightly to suppress a small cry, brown eyes opening wide to stare at him in spite of a new flow of tears.
“I thought… I was s-so scared you… you a-already…”
He stares. He thinks his heart just melted abruptly inside his chest releasing a silent wave of tears, soundless but enormous, a devastating tide of feelings to clean his soul from lies. From pain. From death. No one ever looked at Yoochun like this before. Never. He believed he understood but he didn’t realized… never felt life that intensely. The extreme importance of a very simple truth, small yet essential, and it’s the fact that he exists.
That it matters.
That it’s something he’s supposed to care about, and he knew… he knew that with just a look, just a word, he could revive Yoochun. All of him.
The plea in Changmin’s eyes now is raw and clear, way more powerful than any explicit call. Deep and dazzling, shining with the condensed feelings that must have plagued the younger man’s heart the past weeks. Need, hurt and helplessness, the hopes that were fading away, the fears that kept growing stronger, and confusion. A why, potent and sharp. Doubts, countless. An absolute conviction, the one that he simply didn’t have the right to give up. Beliefs, shaken and damaged, but not broken, no. Only waiting to be comforted. Only wanting to be strengthened.
Yoochun instinctively knows that Changmin would talk and say ‘I needed you’, if he only felt sure enough, but Changmin doesn’t dare anymore. Not yet. Not till Yoochun fixes it.
His fingers start shakily wiping sweat and tears away, and his heart skips a beat when the younger man leans into the touch slightly, his features relaxing a little. Still looking straight at him, eyes radiating with emotions so contradictory they transfigure his whole face. Yoochun allows his right hand to get lost in brown locks, watching silently as tension slowly leaves the other’s body, until Changmin’s eyes finally close with a quiet sigh. Yoochun sees one of the other’s hands twitch, understands that that wordless comfort isn’t enough, and he cautiously comes even closer.
Not a kiss. Just lips coming to rest lightly against Changmin’s cheek, conveying mute apologies and reassurances, and he feels the way the younger man’s body seems to sag in relief.
“You’re alive…”
Already faraway.
One last time, the one Yoochun needs to hear to fully understand what he’s guilty of. The quiet sobs shaking silence are his own now, but he doesn’t try to stifle them. He can do that much. He owes him that small thing, those tears, that moment of weakness, then he will be a hyung again and shoulder once more the responsibility that gives sense to his life.
It’s not a burden, it never was.
He’s empty without Changmin, and he was dead indeed… he was dead and hollow, he died the very moment when he managed to erase him from his heart, and maybe it’s a weak thing to say, but Yoochun doesn’t want to ever feel that way again. Dying from the inside, because he forgot what mattered most to him.
He lies down carefully on the floor next to him, his cheek pressed against Changmin’s, breaths mingling together and tears overlapping. It hurts and they are both broken, and the future is lightless. The present is painful, but Yoochun wants to live that elusive moment of reunion. Not silent, not peaceful, not whole, and certainly not bright, but warm.
The world around has never looked so cold.
Note: ...And closer to the end! ^__^/ And YooMin is back!!! Though it's not exactly nice and fluffy but... yeah *runs* XD As always, don't hesitate to ask if some things don't seem clear in that chaper :))
It's not very important for the plot at that point, but I won't have the occasion to talk about Yoochun's parents again, so if some are wondering what exactly happened >>
Yoochun's parents suspected from the start that the fire that killed Yoowhan wasn't accidental, tried to know more, but got threatened and ended up accepting money to leave and start over in South Korea. Yoochun heard his parents talk about it a few years later and immediately left home, cutting all bonds with them and intending to find out what really happened. For a really long time, he felt as if his parents had just 'sold' Yoowhan for money, which is why his relationship with them is extremely complicated.
But I'll also add that Yoochun understood during his researches that this parents were surely threatened, that those threats probably involved Yoochun himself, and that it's the main reason why they ended up remaining silent in spite of their suspicions. Which is their only excuse in his mind, and also the only reason why he's still speaking to his mother at times... but the scars are still here, and his family is effectively broken.
Thanks to everyone for reading/commenting...!!! <3~
Part 67.
Pairings: JaeMin, HoSu, JaeSu (past), YooMin bff
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama
Summary:
They both gave up on love, one thinking that he doesn’t deserve it and the other unable to let go of a painful past. As Changmin and Jaejoong slowly discover in the other something they weren’t aware they needed, they don’t know yet that their growing feelings will get tangled in a web of secrets. And that it may change everything in a merciless fight between truth and power.
LXVI. Are we coming closer to the night? … Does this world feel dizzy?
Crawling like children… me too, I’m shaking a little.
Park Yoochun is dead.
He doesn’t feel. Doesn’t think. His heart is frozen, sleeping under a thick blanket of snow. It doesn’t matter anymore if there are still feelings, because they turned sluggish and colorless. It doesn’t mean anything even if he still moves or cries. His arms, hands, tears; they don’t mean anything anymore. Nothing does.
Park Yoochun is dead, he keeps telling himself.
It’s the only way for him to resist and make it bearable. They can’t hurt a desensitized body. They can’t harm an existence that was wiped out already. They won’t break through the impenetrable wall of death. It’s a line they won’t cross.
It’s silent inside. White. He gathered every fragment of life and feeling here, and concealed them amidst cotton clouds so that he wouldn’t be able to retrieve them himself. He lost reasons and memories, he forgot how it was when he was still alive, and the temptation of surrendering disappeared ever since he buried the words they wanted him to say.
It’s silent inside. There’s no tiring hope and no vain struggle, no wrenching desire to exist and no need to strain his body to make it go one heartbeat further. He left already, hollow and cold, and shrank into the safe cocoon of his own death.
It’s not because of the pain, no. Not their words. Not their threats. Not their fists.
It’s because they just won’t let it end. They’ll stretch his last hours for as long as they want, and take the final moment away from him. They will steal his death on top of his life. They’ll make it a forever of suffering and despair, and offer him a full stop only after he hands over to them what he hid deep inside. He can’t let them have it, but he can’t face the idea of a never-ending agony either.
So Park Yoochun cheated, and he decided to be dead without letting them know. It doesn’t matter what they do of him now, because he’s not here anymore. Everything they want is already way out of their reach.
His body doesn’t feel. His mind doesn’t think.
It doesn’t change anything when he opens his eyes, since they reveal darkness.
Shadows, actually. There is a source of light, somewhere above him, but he doesn’t dare to face what could remind him that his eyes can still see. He tries to convince himself that the warm whisper that brushes past him regularly isn’t the one of his own breaths, but that he’s just imagining it. Just like the steady beating of his heart. Just like the way his body feels broken in every possible way.
It’s silent inside.
Unblemished.
Whole.
It’s winter inside.
They didn’t manage to bruise an ocean of silky peace and hollow whiteness. It’s still pure there. Still safe. As unmoving as death, and that’s where Park Yoochun took refuge. He doesn’t know for how long he’s been there, but he remembers how he found the only remaining shelter, the last place where he could possibly escape, and it was inside… somewhere inside of him.
He remembers the flight, in brief flashes of feelings and streets. Loneliness. The night. The wait, nerve-racking. Knowing he’d be caught. Hiding again, and feeling them come closer. Counting days. The cold. A sudden rush of fear, and helpless tears in the dark. The desire to go back in time. Fleeing. Flying. Counting hours. Running, and finding all doors closed. When the last light of hope went out. When even willpower faltered. Counting minutes. Trapped. Terror, unknown, and blindness. Discarding the pathetic handful of remaining seconds.
A short moment of struggle, as vain as desperate, and nearly immediately the realization that he wasn’t strong enough. That he was too alive now. That he loved too much and cherished too deeply. That he had something to lose or protect, and that it made him weak. That he wasn’t invulnerable anymore.
That’s why Park Yoochun died.
He died, and brought everything he loves along with him.
It happened as he sensed his strengths reaching their limits, as he started fearing that he wouldn’t be able to resist much longer to a stabbing rain of mixed questions and pain. He isn’t sure how he did it, but he let go of everything they could hurt in him; betrayed his own abused body, killed the very reasons why he had to undergo this, and destroyed all the feelings attached to them. It was abrupt and instinctive, but in the blink of an eye, Park Yoochun ceased to be a tormented prisoner weakly clinging onto evanescent promises, and became a refugee in a white haven.
They haven’t heard a word from him from that moment on.
He screamed, of course. He cried. When the pain becomes too much he has no other choice than to open his mouth, and let an echo of suffering leave his tortured body, but it’s just sounds. Torn and miserable, but sounds only, and nothing more than that. He didn’t speak. The words are dying behind incoherent cries and that’s where they will disappear, no matter what they do.
And he isn’t alone.
Yoowhan has been here with him all along. Yoowhan has always been here, and when Yoochun was on the verge of breaking, it’s the ghost of a little brother who showed him the only way out. It’s Yoowhan who welcomed him in the soothing embrace of unfeeling whites, and who helped him build that wall around what he wanted to protect. It became the two of them again and it felt exactly like before, when they believed that nothing and no one would ever manage to come in between them.
Sometimes it’s a word, the clear phantom of a ‘hyung’ that crosses his thoughts gaily like a runaway bird, resounding in his empty head with the same strength as a clap of joyous thunder, and that vanishes leaving stars in its wake. It can be a smile, wide yet quiet, way too wise for a kid his age. It can also be eyes, dark and curious, and eagerly drinking life without realizing how they are radiating hope in return. But most often, it’s just a feeling.
The imprint that Yoowhan left inside, and that will never disappear. The desire to be strong for someone else. The need to be needed. The conviction that whatever he does, if he does it for him then it just can’t go wrong.
Him.
Him, and that’s usually when Yoowhan’s memory shifts so that there’ll be a vacant space by his side, the exact right shape and feel for another person. And Yoochun can erase everything he is, but the empty places still remain where there used to be priceless memories.
That’s usually when he starts crying. Tears don’t mean anything anymore except from these ones, because they are cold yet warm, as new as melting snow. That’s when it falls upon him with a violence he’s never prepared to face; too ardent, too immense, too complete.
A heartbreaking sensation of longing and love, desperate and warm, and grateful, and anxious. It rises and submerges his heart, trying to make it stir, wanting it to wake up, and Yoochun’s whole being starts craving for another smile. For another ‘hyung’, different eyes, other feelings.
And every time… every single time he has to erase it all, because it could bring him back to life. Because it could give him back everything they took, and rebuild everything they destroyed without even trying.
But he needs to be dead, or he won’t be able to protect anything.
He believes he sank deep enough now. He’s too far for them to ever find a way to rekindle in him that human instinct to survive. He managed to quench it, and Park Yoochun fooled them all and killed himself. It’s just in his own head, maybe, but it works.
He drinks when they give him water, eats whatever food they feel like leaving for him, but those are his only concessions to life. It’s what he needs to do to keep a heavenly landscape of snowy hills preserved in the core of him, so that Yoowhan can visit him here. Yoowhan liked snow so much. Yoowhan’s footprints are everywhere, tracing paths in immaculate whiteness, guiding him through a maze of confused roads but never letting him rest. It’s like he doesn’t want Yoochun to stop walking. It’s like he’s bringing him along on a journey that has no aim, where the only purpose is to keep travelling.
Don’t stop, and another heartbeat reverberates inside.
And Yoochun has no choice but to follow the traces Yoowhan left behind. He wants to find him. Wants to see him walk, steady on his two feet. Yoowhan liked snow so much.
Don’t stop, and it’s easy to focus on that gentle order.
Yoowhan is near now, but he’s still going too fast. Running too far, and Yoochun doesn’t want that place to disappear before he catches up with him. Sees him. Sees his brother standing on his legs, and playing in the snow.
A noise.
He jerks a little, unconsciously straining his ears.
Voices.
The only warning he usually gets, and it instantly drags him out of a white wholeness. Foreign words shatter peace as they turn louder, making the picture tremble and crack at terrifying speed, tainting it with hungry black spots. Already fading, already withered, pieces of dreams disappearing in an empty well and twirling like fragments of fallen leaves.
Yoochun lets go regretfully and watches them vanish in bottomless darkness, still wrapped in vaporous veils of white. He watches, and waits till they fell deep enough… till they’re reduced to a tiny spark of silver shining feebly amidst the hollow space of death. Once more unattainable. Only then does he make the tremendous effort needed to come back to himself, opening his eyes with difficulty before he can anchor his emerging consciousness to a now familiar setting.
The hard wooden floor. The livid glow cast in the room by an opening that was probably meant to be a window, except that there’s no glass. It’s too small to really lighten the shadows around, but sometimes it exhales a cold blow of wind, as if to remind him that there’s life outside. Real, but unreachable. The door, floating menacingly in darkness on the other side of the room.
He dragged his tired body as far from it as he could, because Yoochun dreads what invariably happens whenever that door opens. Being just a few meters away hardly makes him feel safe, but it does leave a few seconds for the initial shock of panic to lessen every time they come to get him.
That’s for his surroundings, but they barely feel real now. They are not comforting, they are not scary either. Just neutral.
It’s where they discard his body when they are done with him, a place to wait, the transition between interminable minutes of merciless beating, and the white oblivion he finds in a soothing illusion. Yoochun simply switches from one to the other: what’s inside and how it keeps him sane, what’s on the other side of that door and how he must be dead there, and the rest… the rest is the worn-out envelop of flesh that he’s using as a buffer.
Drinking. Eating. Crawling. Hunger became familiar, barely noticeable amidst countless reasons to hurt, but Yoochun still isn’t used to the tormenting company of thirst. Weakness became permanent, lack of food, lack of will, lack of everything, and it robbed him from the strength to fight back. Even a steady look. A defying stare. Even the instinctive urge to protect his face or curl on himself when blows and kicks start pouring.
He’s starting to feel like a mere combination of limbs and sounds that lets itself be used and abused, and Yoochun thinks that maybe he isn’t quite human anymore. That he is even more dead than he believes himself to be, at least in his mind and soul.
Because pain is everywhere, leaving powerful traces and marking his body, but as weird as it seems, it’s never too much. Pain is always present, but not incapacitating. Merciless, but not strong enough to prevent him from recovering. They don’t want him to die. They managed to make it feel unbearable while letting him know that they were holding back, and that it was nothing compared to what they could do.
It’s not exactly a comforting thought given how awful he actually feels, but Yoochun is aware by now that his body didn’t undergo any serious damage, with the exception of his left arm. This one is broken and it has been hanging uselessly by his side for a while now, several days he supposes, since it’s impossible for him to keep track of time. He doesn’t know whether they did it intentionally or not, but he still isn’t used to the searing pain that shakes his whole frame whenever they turn their attention to it.
The voices grew louder, came nearer, and now they are close enough for him to hear footsteps.
Yoochun instinctively brings his left arm to his chest using his other hand, sitting with his back to the wall and staring at the door. Eyes fixed on the handle, conflicting emotions quietly battling within in spite of how hard he’s trying not to think. Praying that they aren’t coming for him, that they’ll leave him alone for a moment longer. That maybe they’ll forget him here. That it’s just a very, very, very real-looking nightmare.
He hates those few endless seconds of miserable hope, and how pathetic they make him feel at the worst moment, just before they arrive.
They are right on the other side of the door, and Yoochun’s heart is trying to run away from his chest. It’s terrified and it’s struggling to attract his attention, like a child sobbing as loudly as possible to make his parents come and comfort him. It’s a pitiful mess of feelings; begging, threatening, pleading, crying, but he doesn’t care. Eyes wide. Right hand clasped over his left arm. Tensed and shaking, his body conditioned to fear and hurt, but it doesn’t matter. ‘Dead’, his mind is already chanting.
Dead. Park Yoochun is dead and they can’t hurt him.
Can’t break him.
Can’t kill him.
He hears the key, hears a telltale crack, sees an ominous ray of light that burns his eyes, and Yoochun abruptly pushes consciousness deep inside. Forcibly erases everything he is, everything he feels, and abandons his body to its fate, letting it fight alone against what will come now. Maybe it’s the last time, a part of him can’t help but hope. Maybe they will finally put an end to this.
Voices and steps.
Harsh lights pouring, and Yoochun closes his eyes.
He remembers that he used to try at first. To hit them, or at least to resist. To answer their words with a cold stare. He doesn’t know what he was trying to prove; that they’d never break him, maybe. Now it’s just a waste of energy. A pitiful show not even worth being called pretence, and he doesn’t bother anymore. They broke him, they obliged him to let go of everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, dignity, pride and courage. They gnawed, peeled, scraped, and he can’t even fight back using what remains of him because they’d break it too.
It never seems completely real until they lay hands on him.
He manages to suppress the first cry of pain when they grab his arms roughly, but not the second one, as they force him to stand and pull on his broken arm. It’s okay. Cries don’t mean anything anymore, including the mute sobs of terror violently shaking his heart, the ones he’s so careful not to become aware of. He’s dead, and he doesn’t have to feel ashamed anymore.
Doesn’t have to feel hurt when a hand harshly tugs his hair backwards in a mock attempt to comb them, and a small laugh rises.
“He isn’t very presentable, right?”
Noshiro.
“Looks like shit, you mean.”
Noshiro and Ashitaka. He knows their names. They didn’t bother to hide them from him, and it’s only one proof amidst countless others that he isn’t supposed to get out of there alive.
“Smells like it too.”
Doesn’t have to feel ashamed.
Doesn’t have to feel hurt.
Eyes closed tightly, head hanging low, and Yoochun doesn’t have to care about what they are saying. A warm blow of air against his cheek and a cold whisper right against his ear, amused yet detached, and he can picture the hint of a scornful smile on Noshiro’s thin lips.
“Make an effort, will you? We prepared a surprise, just for you.”
Doesn’t have to listen to their words, though he’s aware that there’s nothing good to expect from them being so obviously joyful. Eager, or expectant, or whatever it is.
Yoochun lets them drag him along a familiar route, and it used to feel long at first but now that he recognizes every corner and door, it seems terribly short to him. They always bring him to the same room. It’s always the same person asking questions, the one called Yamada, and it’s always the same odious softness in his voice.
The dreadful contrast between a gentle admonition, a ‘you know this isn’t necessary’, then a graceful move of his hand and the upsurge of violence that follows. How there always seems to be at least five or six men around, watching, laughing, and adding their share of insults. The questions. He knows all of them by heart, and they’d torment him in his moments of respite as well if Yoochun wasn’t dead already. He believes he managed to forget all the answers.
They are walking fast and he’s already out of breath. Even breathing became painful. Maybe he has one or several cracked ribs, maybe not. He can’t be sure when it feels like he doesn’t have a single part of his body left intact, with the exception of his head. ‘Not the face’, Yamada said the first time, and Yoochun would be thankful if he didn’t know that the only reason was to make sure that he wouldn’t pass out too quickly during questioning sessions.
It’s the last hallway, then a fateful door, and he’s ready now.
“You’ll be very happy in a few seconds, you’ll see.”
Doesn’t have to listen.
“You think he will?”
Doesn’t have to care.
“Sure. So happy he’ll cry, right Yoochun-ah?”
Doesn’t have to answer, because ‘Yoochun’ isn’t him anymore.
A rough shove pushing him forward and making him lose his balance, and the only thing that prevents him from falling is their grip onto his arms. A burning flash of pain, the nauseating awareness that they pulled on his broken arm purposefully, and he grits his teeth not to scream. Eyes closed. Head down. Defeated yet victorious, because he’s dead already.
They cross the door and now it will be the fire of questions. Then silence. The sickening care in a cruel voice, a small move of the hand. The first blow. The second. The moment when he’ll fall on the ground, and then minutes turning into hours as words and pain will get tangled up, inseparable.
“…Yoochun?”
Screams and tears as the only answer, and maybe it’s not what they want, but his body needs an outlet and this one is perfect. Screams are wordless. Tears don’t mean anything anymore. Just salted water, a meaningless flow triggered by pain, and they know exactly how to push on the right buttons to make his body writhe and throb as they wish.
“Y-Yoochun…”
An eternal moment of darkness, then he’ll be back to that other room and detach himself from everything. Sink back into himself. Hide in that white infinity where they don’t belong, and believe that it was the last time and that he’ll be allowed to stay there forever. There are different ways to be dead. A ridiculous puppet letting itself be tortured on the floor. A ghost searching for another in a desert of snow.
“…Hyung.”
He freezes.
Stops breathing. Stops thinking. Stops everything, and he knows that his heart stopped too, and there, this is it… he’s dying. Dying, for real, because he’s being swept away by an immense wave of pain that he can’t explain, since it doesn’t come from them. Collapsing from the inside, walls crumbling with nowhere to run.
“H-Hyung…”
Tears. It’s a voice in tears, a name crying, and he’s dead… he’s dead and he doesn’t have to listen but it’s too late already. It burns… it burns and unfolds, too bright, blinding. His eyes are fixed on the floor but ‘hyung’ is printed behind them, and he can’t erase it. It wasn’t Yoowhan. It wasn’t happy.
He thinks he’s falling.
He chokes on air, realizing belatedly that tears are streaming down his face, hot and messy, rushing out to get free before he can repress them. He doesn’t know how to. Can’t hold back. Doesn’t control anything, feelings are breaking loose and he doesn’t know what to do of them. Emotions so full they are overwhelming, aimless and unattached, now completely foreign and he can’t stifle them. Doesn’t recognize them. Doesn’t know how to make it stop, how to crush his heart and make it cold again because it’s not supposed to be beating that loud, it shouldn’t be that big, it shouldn’t feel too small.
It was a voice… that voice, and it was crying. It was saying that name, his name, and it was I need you and don’t leave me, and he can’t… never could, he just has to, and he raises his head. Doesn’t even have the time to register what he saw before a torn cry shakes his whole frame and his eyes become blurred with a new flow of tears.
Crashing.
Blood and fear, and he starts shaking his head left and right. Bruises and pain, and his heart feels on the verge of asphyxia. He’s shaking, snapping, yet he feels more real than he’s been in days. And he’d rather be dead… dead and gone, because it wasn’t just a name abruptly appearing in a place where it was never supposed to. There was the person saying it.
There was the person saying it, and panic soars up as that thought becomes clearer, as he starts registering what exactly his eyes are trying to show him. Impossible. It’s impossible and he crushes the idea, recoils from it with violent disbelief, because it just can’t be.
Too much.
He went through too much and it’s just his body giving in at last. Just his thoughts turning mad, his mind surrendering, sanity ripped to shreds. The tears on his face, the shattered breaths denying him air, the choked heartbeats shaking his chest… all of this are just the last throes of life, the first steps into death, and it’s normal it’d feel so painful. He’d like to be dead already, he’d like to be spared that last dreadful illusion, and he instinctively tries to make a step backwards.
He wants to run from it. To make it disappear.
“I suppose it’d be useless to ask if you know Shim Changmin here.”
Two syllables, and he knows he was right; it’ll be enough to bring back everything they took, and rebuild everything they destroyed.
He wants to avert his eyes but he can’t look away, horrified and eager. Sick fascination. Hungrily taking in every detail, while desperately wishing that they wouldn’t feel so real. He wants to flee, wants to run forward, wants to disappear in the bottomless gap that just appeared within. His heart opened raw and alive, trembling from head to feet, and he controls nothing. He’s going to throw up. He’d fall if they weren’t holding him so tight. He’d black out if he didn’t need to watch him so badly.
He just moved, a small step in his direction, and they already pulled him back. He staggered on his feet. Winced. Drew in a loud breath, and that’s when their gazes meet. Too wide, too hazy, too scared, and there are tears everywhere in the way. Nothing is right when Changmin cries, and it’s Yoochun’s duty to fix it. He feels his eyes widen in shock, feels his body harden against the hands keeping him still, and he finally realizes that this is Changmin.
That it’s blood on Changmin’s face, fear in Changmin’s eyes, bruises on Changmin’s skin, and Yoochun is running forward. Trying to. They are holding him and it hurts but he doesn’t care, never cared as less as now, because he needs to go. Anger, concern, the consuming fire of instincts and raw needs. They can’t understand, they can’t prevent him. He needs to fix it and make it alright because nothing is right when Changmin cries and it’s unbearable, that frightened look in eyes so dear.
“Let me-“
Yoochun stops as soon as he hears his own voice; the first words he said in days, and they sounded foreign. Powerless and empty.
He’s straining to wrench himself free, desperate to break their hold, painfully conscious that it’s nothing but a waste of energy yet he couldn’t care less. There’s blood on Changmin’s face, Changmin’s hands tied behind his back, silent tears continuously running down his cheeks… brown eyes staring at him like they refuse to believe what they’re seeing, distressed and hurt. He looks horribly fragile like this and Yoochun needs to be here, to tell him ‘I won’t leave’, to take him in his arms and shield him from the world.
He’s the only who can, and no one will take this away from him. From them.
A click.
Low, but telltale.
Yoochun immediately stops struggling and follows Changmin’s gaze, turning to Yamada before his eyes land on the man’s white hands. On a gun in them. A stunned heartbeat. Every coherent thought is wiped out in the blink of an eye, fear flaring inside his chest, words spilling before he can think about consequences.
“Let him go!”
The first thing that came to mind. He’s never been as scared of what they could do as now. A gun, Yamada’s hands, Changmin, and Yoochun can’t even move. Panic spread violently, howling petrifying maybes, and he can’t control it when the closest thing he has to a lucid thought is that Changmin shouldn’t even be here.
“Let him- let him go!!”
Aghast sounds that he can’t assemble. He’ll go crazy, mad… turn insane with terror if that gun remains here for just a second longer. He must do something, anything, end this, utterly helpless facing a situation too intolerable for him to fully apprehend. It’s Changmin, Changmin, and the reality of that is only starting to really dawn on him.
“He has nothing to do with this!!”
“It’s a bit too late for me to believe that.”
So light that it makes him want to scream. Yoochun’s eyes are flying madly between Changmin and the gun, thoughts running in circles, heart shouting deafening warnings that makes him unable to think and find a way to stop it, stop everything, make miracles happen or just say the right words.
“I’ll… I’ll tell you everything j-just…”
Crying.
“Let him go… p-please…”
Begging. It doesn’t make him feel weak or ashamed. He saw the flash of confused panic that crossed Changmin’s eyes when they landed on the gun, and Yoochun doesn’t need any other reason than this.
“I knew there’d be a way to make you more cooperative.”
An approving smile, and a gun dancing lazily in between long fingers. His gaze runs back to Changmin, and Yoochun wouldn’t be able to accept that this is really happening if it wasn’t for the expression on the younger man’s face. And he saw countless emotions there, but this one is alien. Dumb confusion mixed with denial and fear, and Changmin looks paralyzed, unable to detach his eyes from Yamada’s hands and what they are holding. Tears still shining on his cheeks but brown eyes wide and dry, like too shaken to cry, and Yoochun doesn’t realize at once that Yamada spoke again.
“Shim Changmin, the detectives, is there anyone else who knows about your searches?”
“I d-didn’t-“
He swallows. Obliges himself to breath, though it feels like he brought fire inside his lungs, not air.
“I didn’t tell Changmin”, Yoochun answers hastily, desperately wishing that they’ll hear the truth in his voice, “he… he doesn’t know, you can’t-“
He stops talking abruptly. Watches the gun rise like in slow motion, words dying in his throat as it halts midair, pointed right at Changmin. Changmin who looks like he has no idea of what’s happening at all, eyes fixed on the gun like he doesn’t understand what it is, but suddenly so pale he looks about to faint.
“Don’t-“
“This is your last chance”, Yamada interrupts him coldly, “I’ll know soon enough if your friend lied to us, since you are going to tell me the truth.”
“I’m not-“
“Shim Changmin, the detective office, anyone else?”
“No but-“
“Your parents?”
“N-No I-“
“Kim Jaejoong?”
“He-what…?”
Yoochun’s eyes didn’t leave Changmin’s face, and he wonders if it’s panic making him unable to think normally or if he’s missing something there. ‘Kim Jaejoong’ and the younger man’s eyes just filled with tears again, a smothered sob escaping his mouth before he presses his lips tightly together, looking away from him.
“I guess you didn’t lie on that point then”, Yamada comments, throwing a careless glance in Changmin’s direction before turning to him again, “the data you gathered about Hyakunincho, where it is?”
“It…”
Yoochun stops as he sees the calm, expectant look in the man’s eyes, and understanding abruptly dawns on him. He wonders if he could possibly feel even worse than now. It came down to this and it’s all his fault, but it’s not something he’ll be allowed to fix. He doesn’t have a choice. Yamada’s fingers are wrapped around a gun, steady and indifferent, and one of them would press a trigger with the same negligence as the one in his voice when he says that ‘you’re wasting my time’.
“I g-gave it to him…”
He bites on his lower lip, unable to stifle his heart’s cries of protests. He doesn’t have a choice. They know already… they know, and if he lies they’ll know it as well and Yoochun can’t afford… doesn’t want to think of what would happen next.
“Shim Changmin only?”
He nods, unable to talk. Words trapped in his heart, and eyes fixed on the gun not to look at Changmin. He doesn’t want to see the expression on his face. He just wants it to stop, wants that gun to vanish, wants Changmin safe and in his arms, and that last idea rises so abruptly that it erases every other thought. He suddenly feels cold. Terribly cold.
“Is it something like this?”
His eyes mechanically follow Yamada’s free hand, absentmindedly registering the fact that there’s something in it that wasn’t there before. Silver and round. A disk. They have it. It’s over, a distant part of his mind warns him sternly, but Yoochun can’t bring himself to care. He nods again, feeling incredibly empty.
That disk may have meant something before, but it lost all kind of importance. Now he wishes he’d have destroyed everything, and then maybe Changmin wouldn’t be here. He’d be safe. It’d be hell and nightmares and death altogether, but it’d be Yoochun alone dealing with it all, and it’d be bearable. Not like this. Not like the strangling awareness that it’d take one second and the slightest move for everything to end. Everything, and it terrifies him.
“Please…”
A quiet whisper, an unconscious move forward. Pointless, but obeying to the overwhelming urge to just be here. There’s only air between Changmin and a gun, and Yoochun can do nothing but stare. Say empty words about things that aren’t important, that he now hates as strongly as he clang onto them in the past, and if he could be here and remove an unspeakable threat… Just be here, where he’s supposed to, the hyung standing between Changmin and the world so that nothing will hurt him.
“Let m-me-“
“There’s no copy of this?”
Yamada waves the disk in the air, but he isn’t paying attention anymore. Too anxious, too tense, helpless yet burning with the consuming need to run forward.
Changmin started shaking visibly, and it feels as if that gun could break him simply by remaining here just a moment longer. Yoochun doesn’t know what it is, fear, exhaustion or pain, but he sees one of the men holding the younger man giving him a rough shake, as if to oblige him to get control back. Instead Changmin staggers on his feet, eyes turning distant and unfocused for a second or so before they clear again, and Yoochun forgets about questions and answers because something is wrong.
“Let him go…”
They are hurting him. Changmin is hurting and he can do nothing, and it’s like his whole life just became meaningless, losing sense and reasons, illusory lights and useless feelings.
“Answer my question.”
Yoochun doesn’t know what the question is. He wants Changmin safe, free, far. Even if he isn’t here to protect him, as long as that nightmarish scene ends and he can make believe that it never happened.
“Let him-“
A shot.
A scream, hoarse and ugly.
Yoochun’s voice was just wrenched away from his very soul, but all he can hear is another shout. Not his own. And he sees Changmin fall.
Freezes. Sinks, absolute terror blinding his whole being. Earsplitting thunder echoing inside his head. Mad… he’s mad, he wants to be mad. His heart slows down, brakes, stops, delirious and frantic, and time follows it… still then backwards, pounding so hard it hurts as seconds run again, a chaos of broken instants where senses are stuck in reverse until-
Another cry, halfway between a shout and a sob, and Yoochun struggles to get rid of the tears in his eyes. Straining to see, to hear, to grab a glimpse of reality again because there… there was a move, a whimper, and he forcibly holds back tears till his gaze finds brown eyes.
And Yoochun anchors the whole world to them, to the way they are moving, closing, blinking, open and alive… alive, and the next cry that leaves his mouth is made of relief so strong that it stabs his heart instead of healing it. It’s going fast now…
They are already holding him again.
Too fast.
Making him stand, ignoring wretched gasps and convulsive trembles. The only sound in the room is the one of Changmin’s breaths, ragged and full of tears, like he’s drowning, and Yoochun stops breathing just to hear it more clearly, in case his eyes would be deceiving him. He can’t stop looking, latching onto every sign of life, too scared to mind that there’s only pain here. Focusing entirely on a string of uncontrolled spasms, jerky breaths, the hot sheen of sweat and the smell of blood, and the predatory pressure of death. The dark stain growing right under Changmin’s knee.
Yoochun’s eyes remain fixed here, staring in mixed relief and horror as he progressively understands what actually happened, until a loud breath rises and ends with an aborted sob, tearing silence apart. He looks up at once, heart sinking inside his chest when he notices how hard Changmin is struggling not to scream, lips pressed hard and trembling, eyes closed tightly but unable to prevent tears from leaking out. And if he was pale before, now it’s as if all the blood was drained from his face; not a worrying white but a sickening grey.
“That was your last warning.”
Cold, this time. Not bothering to fake compassion.
Yoochun realizes with a pang of hysterical fear that Yamada is still holding the gun, still pointing it at Changmin, and he struggles frantically to retrieve the past minute. Find the question he couldn’t hear, answer it, fill silence with the words he refused to say for days, until they are satisfied and they let Changmin go. He tries to speak but not a single sound comes out, his voice failing him at the worst possible moment, and he startles violently when Yamada suddenly starts walking forward.
Towards Changmin. Closer. Nearer, and more, until there’s only an inch of air remaining between the gun and Changmin’s head. And closer, till cold metal presses against skin and the younger man opens his eyes slowly. And Yoochun finds them, meets them, sees the abrupt shift in brown irises and the way they freeze. Shocked. Dragged out of pain only to be forced into something incomparably darker, and it’s like each passing second is now killing the life in them.
“Did you make any copy of that disk?”
Yamada’s voice is back to its usual sweetness, and Yoochun can only shake his head. Once, twice, then repeatedly, unable to stop. His breathing quickens, stumbles; his eyes remain fixed on Changmin, silently begging him to keep looking at him because it feels like preserving that silent link is the only hope they’ve left.
“Did you hear from someone else what really happened at Hyakunincho?”
Still shaking his head, mechanically handing over to them cheap explanations that they probably think priceless. Yoochun doesn’t care. Changmin just closed his eyes, sagged, shrank, slipped from their hold before they roughly brought him up again. Another cry of pain, more tears, more blood, breaths turning into soft pants and body surrendering, slowly but surely.
“Why did you start searching?”
He manages to avert his gaze from Changmin for a split second, finding Yamada’s small eyes and recognizing the knowing light in them. The man is perfectly conscious that Yoochun will tell them everything they want at that point, but he still leans forward a little. Delicately removes a stray strand of hair stuck on Changmin’s damp forehead using the end of his gun, and smiles a little when the younger man instinctively recoils from him.
Another spasm, another cry as he involuntarily moves his leg, and Yoochun thinks he’s going to be sick. Aware that it wouldn’t take much for him to become literally crazy with fear, and that it’d only make things worse.
“There must a reason why you had suspicions, right?”
He knows that he shouldn’t answer. That they can’t know the truth. That’s it’s wrong. That it’s bad. His gaze travels back to the gun, still here, still attached to Changmin’s head and he doesn’t know anymore if it’s tying him to life or to death.
“My… my parents…”
He shouldn’t answer.
“They weren’t sure… they just… I heard them talk about it.”
Yoochun closes his eyes, resigned and empty. Waiting for the next question, for a shot, for a scream or another blow. Whichever it is. He wants it to be over. It’s just nervous tension keeping his body upright, the powerful effects of adrenaline and fear, and he knows they’ll cease as soon as something different happens, be it a good or a bad thing.
‘Good’ right now would be a pause. A respite. A moment of illusive freedom when he’d be allowed to go and bring Changmin into his arms. Dry his tears. Soothe his pain. Tell him sweet lies that ‘it’s alright’ and ‘I’m here now’.
‘Bad’ is way too dark and he doesn’t feel strong enough to face it.
“Where are your parents now?”
Wrong.
“Canada… they… they have friends there.”
It’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter anymore. He closed his eyes but he might as well have kept them open. Yoochun knows that whatever happens now, that moment will remain engraved in his mind. The image of Changmin with blood on his face and tears in his eyes, a gun pressed to his temple, oppressive fear filling all the space of the room around them, and hostile eyes watching with cruel detachment. Nothing can possibly be worse than that. Nothing. And it’s all his fault.
A light touch on his face, and Yoochun opens his eyes.
“See… it wasn’t that difficult.”
Yamada. He didn’t hear him come, but the man is right in front of him now. His heart twists painfully inside his chest and his gaze flies to Changmin’s frame, just a few steps away and yet unreachable. Breaths so low that they are barely audible now, but Yoochun can tell that it’s because he’s struggling not to cry.
Then the younger man turns his head slightly, a nearly imperceptible move, and opens his eyes to look straight at him. And he’d be completely unable to say what it was that crossed brown orbs just now. A poignant call for help, despair or unbearable pain, unless it was that indefinable sensation of mixed warmth and sadness, the one radiating from a ‘you and me’ when ‘you and me’ remains as the only shelter.
Maybe it was a bit of everything, maybe it was something else entirely, but when Changmin closes his eyes again, wincing as the man holding his right arm moves a little, the feeling still lingers. A connection, reliable and strong. And it gives Yoochun the strength to face Yamada, to look directly at his face, and forget his broken self.
“Let him go…”, he whispers once more, helplessness making his voice shake a little in spite of his efforts to make it sound steady.
“I don’t think so.”
Yamada throws a quick glance in Changmin’s direction, seemingly absorbed in his thoughts for a short moment before he nods to himself.
“But there are some things I need to do before we continue that talk”, the man adds calmly, only allowing the ghost of a smirk to pass over his lips when Yoochun tenses as he hears the last words, “and I believe you’ve a lot to say to your friend here.”
Of course, it’s just another of their tricks. In appearance giving them a moment of respite, but intending to listen to everything they’ll say. Wait till they retrieve a spark of hope to cling onto, and then, right at that moment, snatch it from them and re-break everything. And this time it’ll be ten times worse because during a foolish instant, they believed that they’d find a way to fight back.
It’s just another of their tricks, but already Noshiro and Ashitaka are making him turn around, dragging him out of the room, and he hears a loud whimper close that can only mean that Changmin is right behind him. And Yoochun’s eyes fill with tears, half-delirious with relief in spite of the pain, in spite of the heartrending cries that follow him all along on the way back, in spite of the piercing knowledge that it can only go worse from here.
Ten seconds later and he’s back to his dark room, and to the shadows lurking in corners. But this time he doesn’t crawl as far from the door as possible. This time, Yoochun doesn’t move from where he fell on the ground, eyes fixed on the rectangle of light outlined by the door, and on the people there. A short moment of wait, just the time needed for them to exchange a few words in Japanese before one of them cuts Changmin’s bonds, and another body lands next to his with a sharp cry of pain.
And Yoochun doesn’t think. Doesn’t even wait till they close the door behind them. Eyes blurred by countless tears, blindly searching for hands, arms, warmth, until his fingers find clothes. Shaking so hard he’s afraid to hurt him as he wraps his right arm around what must be Changmin’s waist, not attempting to make him sit up but tentatively coming closer instead. Leaning above him carefully, ignoring the throbbing pain in his broken arm. Terrified yet hopeful, desperate to hear a word that isn’t a scream, needing to see something that isn’t fear.
“Changmin-ah…”
It never seemed so fragile before, that name. And yet he saw him break and fall in many ways, countless times, but never before… never because of him. Never as true as actual bruises and blood, a shotgun and menaces.
“C-Changmin-ah…”
He stifles a small cry when something bumps against his broken arm, eyes opened wide in spite of tears, and finally… finally their gazes meet and it’s only the two of them, with nothing in between. Changmin’s eyes look darker than usual, bigger, deeper, maybe because of the dim lights or because of the storm of emotions raging in brown orbs usually so calm. It’s all for him, the mute strength radiating from a single look, keeping him speechless and spellbound and Yoochun wouldn’t be able to move even if he wanted to.
He’s scared.
Doesn’t know what to expect. He can’t promise that it’ll be alright. Can’t erase the past hours, or maybe the past weeks. Can’t protect him, can’t heal him, can do nothing but be here and it isn’t enough. It won’t be enough. It’ll just add emotional distress to physical torture, but he can’t bring himself to think about that now.
It’s a suspended moment of silence, heavy with unsaid words, charged with extreme tension. Yoochun can feel Changmin’s body tense close to his, straining against pain and anguish, probably clinging onto the last resources of willpower and on the verge of passing out. The younger man’s arms are lying at a weird angle on the floor on each side of his body, useless, since the other is probably still completely unable to move them, not yet. It’s dark but not enough to hide the ugly bruises already smearing his wrists, and Yoochun thinks with a pang of panic about the dark stain he saw earlier on his leg.
The shot.
The gun.
A vomit of crimson and cold blasts.
It’s not right. Nothing is, because a soft gasp just escaped Changmin’s lips as a few more tears started running down his face, and he doesn’t know why. He wants to tell him not to cry. That he’s here now. That they won’t hurt him anymore, never, not as long as he’s here to stop them, and it’s stupid but it’s the only way he knows. His right hand is trembling uncontrollably when he finally manages to let go of the other’s clothes to bring it to his face, touching his cheek lightly, careful… like a single touch would be enough to finish breaking him.
“Changmin-ah…”
Softer. Lower. Just ‘you and me’, he wants to say. Now it’s just you and me. You don’t have to be scared. You don’t have to hold back.
Yoochun doesn’t even know if he still has the right to say that kind of thing.
He doesn’t dare to think of how Changmin must feel, a crushing combination of incomprehension and terror and pain. He hopes that the younger man will simply blame him for it all. It won’t lessen the guilt, it won’t make him feel better, but maybe it-
“You’re alive…”
A shiver, lips pressed tightly to suppress a small cry, brown eyes opening wide to stare at him in spite of a new flow of tears.
“I thought… I was s-so scared you… you a-already…”
He stares. He thinks his heart just melted abruptly inside his chest releasing a silent wave of tears, soundless but enormous, a devastating tide of feelings to clean his soul from lies. From pain. From death. No one ever looked at Yoochun like this before. Never. He believed he understood but he didn’t realized… never felt life that intensely. The extreme importance of a very simple truth, small yet essential, and it’s the fact that he exists.
That it matters.
That it’s something he’s supposed to care about, and he knew… he knew that with just a look, just a word, he could revive Yoochun. All of him.
The plea in Changmin’s eyes now is raw and clear, way more powerful than any explicit call. Deep and dazzling, shining with the condensed feelings that must have plagued the younger man’s heart the past weeks. Need, hurt and helplessness, the hopes that were fading away, the fears that kept growing stronger, and confusion. A why, potent and sharp. Doubts, countless. An absolute conviction, the one that he simply didn’t have the right to give up. Beliefs, shaken and damaged, but not broken, no. Only waiting to be comforted. Only wanting to be strengthened.
Yoochun instinctively knows that Changmin would talk and say ‘I needed you’, if he only felt sure enough, but Changmin doesn’t dare anymore. Not yet. Not till Yoochun fixes it.
His fingers start shakily wiping sweat and tears away, and his heart skips a beat when the younger man leans into the touch slightly, his features relaxing a little. Still looking straight at him, eyes radiating with emotions so contradictory they transfigure his whole face. Yoochun allows his right hand to get lost in brown locks, watching silently as tension slowly leaves the other’s body, until Changmin’s eyes finally close with a quiet sigh. Yoochun sees one of the other’s hands twitch, understands that that wordless comfort isn’t enough, and he cautiously comes even closer.
Not a kiss. Just lips coming to rest lightly against Changmin’s cheek, conveying mute apologies and reassurances, and he feels the way the younger man’s body seems to sag in relief.
“You’re alive…”
Already faraway.
One last time, the one Yoochun needs to hear to fully understand what he’s guilty of. The quiet sobs shaking silence are his own now, but he doesn’t try to stifle them. He can do that much. He owes him that small thing, those tears, that moment of weakness, then he will be a hyung again and shoulder once more the responsibility that gives sense to his life.
It’s not a burden, it never was.
He’s empty without Changmin, and he was dead indeed… he was dead and hollow, he died the very moment when he managed to erase him from his heart, and maybe it’s a weak thing to say, but Yoochun doesn’t want to ever feel that way again. Dying from the inside, because he forgot what mattered most to him.
He lies down carefully on the floor next to him, his cheek pressed against Changmin’s, breaths mingling together and tears overlapping. It hurts and they are both broken, and the future is lightless. The present is painful, but Yoochun wants to live that elusive moment of reunion. Not silent, not peaceful, not whole, and certainly not bright, but warm.
The world around has never looked so cold.
Note: ...And closer to the end! ^__^/ And YooMin is back!!! Though it's not exactly nice and fluffy but... yeah *runs* XD As always, don't hesitate to ask if some things don't seem clear in that chaper :))
It's not very important for the plot at that point, but I won't have the occasion to talk about Yoochun's parents again, so if some are wondering what exactly happened >>
Yoochun's parents suspected from the start that the fire that killed Yoowhan wasn't accidental, tried to know more, but got threatened and ended up accepting money to leave and start over in South Korea. Yoochun heard his parents talk about it a few years later and immediately left home, cutting all bonds with them and intending to find out what really happened. For a really long time, he felt as if his parents had just 'sold' Yoowhan for money, which is why his relationship with them is extremely complicated.
But I'll also add that Yoochun understood during his researches that this parents were surely threatened, that those threats probably involved Yoochun himself, and that it's the main reason why they ended up remaining silent in spite of their suspicions. Which is their only excuse in his mind, and also the only reason why he's still speaking to his mother at times... but the scars are still here, and his family is effectively broken.
Thanks to everyone for reading/commenting...!!! <3~
Part 67.