/ sometime in high school .. @no-exits
( tw: physical abuse, violence )
his head is spinning, still. a slight ringing in his ears from the last blow, that one in particular, which had fully delivered the weight of a man of nearly six feet, of iron fists, and had sent him sprawling sideways onto the coffee table. in shared company is the metallic tang of blood.
it’s not the taste in his mouth that makes him feel sick, but rather the familiarity of it. like when you eat something so often for so long, just the odor of it is enough to want to wretch.
hwanhee spits out red onto the sidewalk until there’s nothing left. a gaze slightly unfocused checks his watch for the time. shit. twenty-two minutes late to an already postponed session. after nearly a year of seeing gyeoul-hyung on a weekly basis (as mandated by his parents), he’s starting to run out of excuses for every time he has to push back their meeting.
i just started dating. she’s my first; hyung, cut me some slack. / my homeroom teacher wanted to talk. something about the last exam? / my friends dragged me to the pc bang. you know i can’t say no to that. / i may or may not have gotten into a fight. see you in an hour?
it makes him feel terrible (because he knows how busy the older man is) and all the lies, one too many, are beginning to pile up, but he can’t help it—there’s no way around his tardiness. not when his father is angry, at him, all the time. not when his own bloodline’s best communication comes in the form of violence, packed strategically into hard punches and backhanded slaps and a tight grip around a 100% leather hide belt that the man so proudly wears for the camera.
take today, for example. he’d ended up with a busted lip, a split cheek, bruised ribs, and an irritated welt on the left of his back, and for what? all because he’d scored a little too high on his finals? because he hadn’t missed a couple more questions? because somehow, his success makes the protagonist of the kangs’ story look smaller?
hate is an ugly feeling, but it’s made a home in him, deep in his gut. and like the pungency of metal in his mouth, it’s the familiarity of it that makes him nauseous.
a car is waiting to take him to gyeoul’s place, despite the fact that he lives only a few minutes away. there’s not enough time for hwanhee to go through his whole cover-up routine, but he manages to pull a loose crewneck over his head and haphazardly stick a band-aid over the corner of his torn lip. the driver knows better than to ask questions by now—hwanhee can only hope that gyeoul will do the same.
fingers run slowly through his hair before hesitantly ringing up gyeoul’s place on the intercom. “hey, hyung, it’s me. sorry i’m late.” again.