Mystic Messenger Angst Fic
You, Me, Us: Part I | Part III | Part IV | FINALE | Es&Es
DEDICATED TO @jumins-han AND THEIR SUNSHINE MESSAGE THAT DID WONDERS FOR MY DAY!! Thank you so much for loving my fics, dear! I’m new at writing fics, you have NO IDEA how appreciated your message was!!
Minor spoilers for Zen’s After Ending and Seven Route
Trigger warnings (emotional abuse, psychological trauma, mentions of death and hints at suicidal ideation)
AND THIS PART IS FRIGGIN’ LONG.
Is it still ‘lost’ if it doesn’t matter?
You nod numbly at the the middle-aged receptionist who looked as exciting as the gray wall behind her. Slowly she stands and raises an eyebrow at the suitcase you’d dragged behind you. Giving a once-over at the haphazard get-up you’d barely managed to slip on, she sighs before speaking.
“Ran away from home, Miss MC?” She asks, slipping the key to room number 606 off its hook to hand over to you. As you take it from her, your sleeves slip back and you feel her gaze linger.
Home. You could barely resist the urge to double-over. The receptionist’s expression softens after a while and she calls someone over.
“This is a relatively small and old hotel, but we can guarantee you are safe. Please stay as long as you’d like.” She says as a young bellboy plucks the suitcase out of your hands and leads you to the elevator.
You immediately regret leaving the safety of the lobby once the bellboy closes the door on his way out. The room is quaint and dim-lit, but made to give a semblance of comfort.
You feel no such thing. All there is is a gnawing pit in your stomach and weight much too heavy on your chest. Your mind raced as voices warred with loud silence and self-hatred.
What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?
You squeeze your eyes shut and move to flip every switch and open every light. You threw everything that would have helped with what you could might shouldn’t do out the window.
You open your luggage to keep your phone with you then remember that you’d chucked it out the window of the house. You resign to sitting on the floor by the bed and glance at the telephone on the bedside table.
Would Saeyoung be able to hack old-fashioned phones? Did you even want him to?
It dawns on you then that you were cut-off from everyone you knew and everyone who could find you. At the thought, your chest manages to breathe at the semblance of relief, that was terribly, terribly short-lived.
How long will you live running away from the RFA? How long could you stay off Saeyoung’s radar? Because for sure, at the number of missed calls from earlier, with or without Zen’s request he would attempt to find you.
What would happen if you somehow escaped them?
You choke at a sob and curl up on your side. Escape. Since when had you thought of escaping the RFA..? None of this was their fault.
“Then is it Zen’s?” They would surely ask that. You lived with him–he was your life for over two years. Blame him, that’s what they’d do if you went missing.
You couldn’t let that happen. They were his friends before you, and you were determined for them to stay friends even after you. Which was why you couldn’t tell them of your circumstances either.
A laugh bubbles out of your chest. It’s dry and hoarse and painful.
You could tell no one of what happened with Zen, neither could you hide forever. All signs would point to him and you wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
So then will you stay silent again? Pretend you’re okay?
“Do you like playing victim, MC?”
All at once, his existence and what it represents crashes over you. You begin tremble, eyes wide with burning tears. Your body quakes and your chest begs and begs for air you couldn’t give. Your hands curl and you try to protest, but the world was already starting to black out, bright lights proving useless.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
You thought you’d escaped Zen and the corpse of what’s left of him. But then you realize that he’s not the only one who’s dead; you’re gone too.
The girl who ate her own words: your monster is you.
It took seven days, three hours, fifty-six minutes and two seconds for Zen to realize that you could be gone for good.
The first day, he’d talked himself into going to work, thinking that you’d come back to him in a few days. This wasn’t the first time either of you stormed out on each other, and both always returned. This time wouldn’t be different.
That night, he’d come home to find the apartment dark and gloomy, exactly the way he left it. He decided to leave the living room as it was and instead set out to look for your broken phone.
A storm came the next day, and he wondered it you were safe inside. He had rehearsals the whole day, with barely any meal breaks. He thought of the lunch you’d been offering him. He vowed never to take them for granted again.
The third day it was still raining, and he was still working to the bone. He’d come home to a flooded kitchen and overflowing laundry. You always reminded him to close the windows before he left. And laundry… He remembered you fought that morning about some gray shirt that hadn’t been washed. He decided to put that on his apology list too.
The fourth day, the director had commended him on his performance. Your concentration really is something!, the director asked. Did something good happen? Zen came home that day to tell you of the praise until he remembered you weren’t back yet. He asked himself before he fell asleep: Did something good happen? Was this good? Was this what I needed?
The next two days, he’d thrown himself into work again, earning more praise from the director, from his co-stars, from his fans. That day concern for you faded into the background. Maybe he needed this break. He needed time away from you just as you needed time away from him.
She’ll be proud of me once she returns, he tells himself as he tries to get used to having the huge bed to himself and waking up cold because he forgot to get under the blankets.
A few hours past the seventh night, Zen came home drunk. Final rehearsal was a success, and he didn’t want to celebrate alone in his empty apartment. He staggered into the foyer, taking off one shoe and forgetting about the other.
Laughing at his own sorry state, he calls your name and wonders if you’d give him water if he apologized enough.
Pain shoots up the bottom of his foot and he’s quick to wake up, yelping as he palmed the wall to open the lights. Momentarily blinded, he curses at the sight of his bleeding foot and the broken piece of china wedged in there.
He’s seen that pattern before. Then he rememembers Jumin Han and the vase he’d given you as a housewarming gift. He begins to rant internally at how that stupid CEO-in-line still managed to ruin his life until his eyes focus enough at more of its parts covering the carpet.
His red, blood-shot eyes follow the broken pieces. He remembers he’d broken both vases, and on the far side of the room, another one. The sofa was misaligned, and the coffee table was half-flipped over.
Lightning strikes and he sees you there, curled up by the corner, crying and begging. You looked so small, so afraid, so devastated.
He growls to himself, urging his body to move and save you–his angel, his princess, his sun, moon and stars. The step he took brought on more pain, and this time it was enough to snap him back to reality.
All at once, everything he’d said, gone and done slammed into him, sending him backwards, ungracefully falling down the ground littered with the sharp shards of his irreversible mistake.
Foolish, foolish was he for thinking for a second to save you. He was no hero. Heroes don’t hurt the ones they love–they don’t go and destroy them. They don’t burn and tear them to shreds until nothing is left.
In the end, an actor was all he really was. A fake, a fraud, a man empty–pretending he could live without his heart.
The house is quiet save for his regret and agony that manifested themselves into anguished cries and pitiful begging. Your eyes from that night, that second he let you go haunts him, scorns him, reminds him:
You are never coming home.
It’s been five months since the last time anyone saw you.
Four months since Yoosung asked the question everyone avoided asking, Where is MC? Two days after that, Saeyoung grimly announced that he couldn’t find you.
Three months since the chat room became bare, with no one logging in very often. Questions with no answers were what they knew well. What they never learned was how to maneuver around them. So they don’t try at all.
Two months since you broke your silence and came back. Yoosung cried, Jaehee did too. Jumin was stoic as ever, almost scolding, but even from mere strings of letters, everyone knew that he too was relieved beyond words.
The Choi twins came in together at the rare sound of rapidly beeping sounds. Saeyoung was so ecstatic to see you back that he could barely type the right words. No one could understand but Saeran who rearranged his letters, following the red bubbles with translations.
–ZEN entered the chatroom–
ZEN: What’s with all the beeping
ZEN: Wait is that–
–ZEN left the chatroom–
Suspicions no one dared voice the past month floated up to the surface at Zen’s behavior. You were quick to stomp on those seeds and gave sound explanations that Zen would have bought had he not known the truth. No one but the Choi twins knew of the truth behind what Zen had done after he left the chatroom either.
A month had passed since the last RFA party, one that you’d worked hard on organizing, coordinating guests and pulling the best strings. As far as the members knew, you met no one during the preparations. It was almost like you’d returned to the first RFA party you’d coordinated, where you were this mysterious girl that found herself smack-dab in the middle of trouble.
They couldn’t wait to see you again. But you never showed.
So you should have expected the surprise on Saeran’s face when he saw you walking into his ice cream shop, a small notebook on one hand, and a child on another.
It was almost too difficult to do the math due to shock; there was no way that was your kid. You were gone for five months, not five years.
“Mister!” Saeran jolts at the child’s voice. “Mister, strawberry please!”
You eye the red-head carefully, gauging whether or not you should make a run for it. It had been an act of kindness when you approached the child who was crying her heart out. You asked her where she saw her mother last and she started leading the way by the hand, talking about strawberries and how delicious they made them.
Who they was had been lost to you, until you found yourself walking down familiar streets and come face to face with one of the places you avoided most.
“Strawberry please!” The child insists and repeatedly pokes at the glass partition. Strawberry ice cream. She was talking about strawberry ice cream. You scolded yourself for being dumb enough to think that strawberries were made. And in the heart of the city, no less.
“Alright, alright!” Saeran pretends to sigh as either of you snap out of it. “Two scoops then, for making you wait.”
The child grins and swings her arms over her head. “Yay! Thank you, Mister!” she squeals as she turns to you. Her small mouth forms an O as she remembers you’re still there.
“Mister, this Miss says she likes cool ice cream!” She pouts, little arms crossing over her chest. “But all ice cream is cold. Can you help her?”
Saeran’s eyes lift to you just as he finishes scooping up the girl’s serving. “Of course.” His eyes the color of the ice cream you’d told the kid you liked seemed to gleam at the intensity of his stare. “She only ever had to ask.”
Saying “this isn’t good” was the understatement of the century.
“Mommy!” Her small voice cleaves the tension in two. The little girl runs out the door and barrels into her mother’s arms, ice cream now on both their clothes.
You attempt to go after the child when Saeran’s voice halts your steps. “Miss, you forgot to pay for your ice cream.”
Right. You couldn’t very well drag the child back here and ask her to pay for all of it. So you hesitantly approach the counter and fish your wallet out of your bag. Upon opening it, you curse yourself for the luck that has failed you yet again.
With a sigh, Saeran cranes his head to look at the clock, unties his apron and says, “It’s on the house. In exchange, sit.”
You want to do anything but sit, though.
He could obviously see that on your face, so he says it again. “Sit, MC.”
“Do you know how stupid it is to just disappear?” was the first thing Saeran asked.
You flinch at the bite in this words. He’s angry. Of course he is. He and his brother had called you quite literally over a hundred times that night and it took you three months to answer them.
You would apologize profusely if you could.
“My brother went crazy trying to get ahold of you, but it’s like you’ve been wiped off the face of the earth.” Saeran adds, cool eyes boring onto you. “Jumin Han was just about to launch a full-on investigation on your case had you not reappeared when you did.”
Saeran, sensing your relief, leans forward and his crosses his arms over the table. “You disappear, reappear and disappear again on the party you helped plan. They’re not stupid, MC. Everyone knows something is up.”
Of course, they did. You just needed a few more time.. Just a little more time to recover.
Your eyes flit to his and find nothing but concern and sincerity in his blue orbs. With a small smile, you nod. That was the most he got from you today, and that in itself was strange. You were always one to say thank yous excessively.
“But tell me this. What have you been up to, MC?”
Your eyes avoid his. Outside, clouds rolled quickly, quietly. You didn’t like it. Silence always brought forth an omen of storm.
Saeran says nothing as your attention focuses on what’s beyond the glass pane. Instead, he takes note of your worried lip, the bags underneath your eyes, and the fidgeting hand that kept picking on the edge of the small notebook.
How you are now is a far cry from the girl he’d brought into the mess called RFA. He was what dragged you into this. In a way, they all had a hand in your pain and he was beyond terrified that you’d gone beyond repair.
Saeran’s chest grows heavier by the second at this one-sided conversation, but he continue to ask his questions anyway.
“What’s that?” His question pulls you back into the ice cream shop. You subconsciously pull the notebook closer to you, but showed no intention of answering his question.
He thinks back to the diary his therapist had asked him to maintain even after termination. Did you have one too? If you did, then that meant you were getting help, and that was almost enough an answer.
“Alright, I won’t ask about what you’ve been doing anymore. So eat.” The relief on your face was so obvious, he grew even more suspicious.
Seconds pass before you pick up the cup of semi-melted ice cream. The cool and sweet flavor of the soft-serve spreads over your tongue and you can’t help but smile at the nostalgic flavor.
You squeeze your eyes shut at the images that threatened to take over your thoughts.
You’re okay. You’re here. He’s gone. You’re fine.
“MC?” You jolt at the sound of Saeran’s worried voice. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Your hands were shaking. You couldn’t even muster a smile.
It strikes you then that you don’t remember how to fake one, not anymore. You couldn’t pretend you were fine. Messages were one thing, but in person…
The realization that came with seeing the yawning gap you’d helped create was enough to send you back to that deep, dark place.
Silence is all you have left and still it destroys everything.
You couldn’t have Saeran find out. You couldn’t face the RFA. Not yet. Not like this.
Saeran’s hand reaches across the table and you recoil violently, leaning back as far as you could whilst curling into yourself.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Beyond the glass pane, lightning strikes and thunder booms overhead. You begin to leave, desperate to disappear before you fell, before anyone were to see you fall apart again.
Between his hesitation and your desperation, you became a ghost once again. Saeran cursed himself and begins to ask himself if he’d imagined the whole thing.
He didn’t. The evidence was on the floor, by the foot of the chair by which you’d sat.
The small, beaten black notebook.
After his unsuccessful attempts at getting Saeyoung to find your whereabouts since you appeared back on the chatroom then, his days turned gray. He went nowhere but work and home, doing nothing but act, ride, sleep. Rinse and repeat. He’d fallen back to what he was before you, only with a much bigger void at the center of his chest.
You’re alive. That’s all that kept him from going insane. But were you living?
Somehow he finds himself in front of the convenience store, craving a smoke. He’d quit since that day. Alcohol too. He knew that it wasn’t that drunk night that broke you. It had been building, mounting, piling like spider cracks on glass. He couldn’t stand losing himself that way, not anymore.
Crying meets his ears and he turns around to see a bundle of pink and ribbons bawling in the middle of the street. Adults passed her by, and her panic increased by the minute. She’s lost, he thought.
And then, like a mirrage–a fucking miracle, you were there.
Your hair was shorter, your face a lot thinner. You looked so tired as you bent down to the child’s level. Rooted to the spot, he watched you take something out of your bag and huddled closer to the child. Her crying stops and she latches onto you. She says something and you nod.
When you smiled, his heart stopped and sped back up. It was small, still tired, still broken, but real. That was the smile that brought color into his gray world years ago: on the rooftop under the stars.
He scrambled to follow you, dread building in his stomach as you found yourselves in front of the ice cream shop where he’d ridiculed you. Regret joined dread and both burned in his stomach as he watches Saeran recognize the girl he’d destroyed.
Zen’s hand flew to his jaw unconsciously. It was obviously healed, but the memory of Saeran’s murderous glare and heavy fists were enough to bring about ghosts of pain. Even Zen had to spend a week in the hospital after making the mistake of going straight to the Choi residence when MC returned to the chatroom.
He waited for you to come out, watched you from the growing shadows as the clouds blocked the sinking sun. It was going to rain. Did you have an umbrella?The second he thought that, lightning struck and you were running like hell out of the ice cream shop.
Zen made to chase you, sparing a second to look back at Saeran, who was holding a black notebook in trembling hands.
And then he was chasing you.
He always thought you ran fast. You’d admitted once that you’d wanted to go for track until you got sick. Why he was remembering that now, he didn’t know.
“MC!” He calls as heavy sheets of rain start to fall. He loses sight of you in between the throes of people and the pouring rain. He finds you seconds later and begins to run as fast as he could.
But for all his athletic prowess, Zen was only Zen and he did not control fate. Fans he’d once prioritized before you swarmed him, holding umbrellas out for him. He cranes his head, hoping to at least find you in the crowd, but you were already gone, slipped away from him again.
“MC!” He screamed at the top of his lungs, uncaring about anything else. He had to see you. He had to talk to you and when he did–
When he did… what would he do?
Kneel and beg? Plead for you to come back to him, run back to what broke you and turned you into… into what?
Do you really not understand what’s happening to us, Zen? Or is it that you don’t even understand what us means anymore?
Your words that night had struck a cord so deep into his core that he’d blacked out soon as he heard them.
You were right. You have always been right and he’s always been wrong. He understood what you meant and he was sorry he’d let it all change. He wanted to tell you everything and anything to get you back.
When he finds you, he would kneel, he would beg, and he would fix what was broken. Even if he had to melt down what broke either of you to make two whole people again–two people who reflected each other like the mirrors he’d once said.
“MOVE.” Saeran’s voice almost knocks Saeyoung off the chair.
“You can’t just barge in here and ask for my computer! What if I had been watching porn?” Saeyoung exclaims, slipping his headphones off his head.
With the click of his tongue, Saeran pulls his brother off the chair himself. “I’ll clear your browser history for you, then.”
“What are you doing, Saeran?” Saeyoung asks as Saeran opens all three of his screens. He leans on the backrest of the chair, carefully watching what the younger brother was so impatient to find. “Wait. MC? You’re searching for MC?”
Saeran’s fingers fly over the keyboard and hundreds of boxes pop up and slide off the screen at an alarming rate. Even Saeyoung voiced his surprise that his brother wasn’t out of practice.
“Did something happen? We’ve tried looking for her, and still nothing. I thought you said we shouldn’t force to find someone who tried so hard not to be found?”
And what a stupid fucking thing to say that was.
“What the hell?” Saeyoung exclaims as he sticks his face to the screen, breaking Saeran’s concentration. “A code? And thousands of layers at that? What kind of shit did MC pull to keep her information hidden?”
Saeyoung grabs another chair and tries to connect another keyboard. “Move over, brother. You can’t do this alone. This kind of code–” Saeyoung trails off as the blaring red boxes shut off one by one.
The past few months, Saeran hadn’t lent his brother a hand and even got in his way, convinced you didn’t want to be found. What mattered to him was that you were alive.
Now all of his thoughts and reservations burned in the trash at the truth he’d found.
You couldn’t do this alone. He wouldn’t let you do this alone.
Cleared, the last box opened and revealed a blue rose. Saeran typed a few things and in minutes, all of the data the bot had collected on you was out in the open.
“Shut up, stupid brother.”
“No, no, no. This–This is beyond my comprehension, Saeran.” Saeyoung pulled at his hair so forcefully, Saeran was convinced he’d go bald in less than an hour. “Do you have any idea how much time I spent trying to gather data and all this time all of it was blocked by my own brother?”
“A lot of things are beyond your comprehension. And yes, I actually do.”
After all Saeyoung’s bitching, Saeran had already gathered the necessary data to find you.
“Why now?” Saeyoung asked when he finally settled down enough to catch up. “Did you meet her?”
Saeran didn’t answer, which confirmed Saeyoung’s suspicions. “I take it she wasn’t well, considering you undid the codes you worked so hard to hide her.”
Deciding showing was easier he pulled the small notebook from his pocket and handed it to Saeyoung who gingerly took it.
Saeyoung was an agent. He’d been given more delicate information than this, under the direst of circumstances. But he what he felt as he flipped the notebook was unmistakably fear.
[Would you mind reading my response? …]
His chest grows heavier and heavier at every scribble, at every page and words that barely made sense. Some of your writings were elegant and slow. Others were frantic, like you couldn’t string words on paper fast enough.
The notebook was almost full, like the person who used it found it a necessity to have it with them at all times.
Saeyoung sinks to his seat as he read the contents of the very last page:
[Is it still ‘lost’ if it doesn’t matter?]
As if asking Saeran to refute his assumption, the older brother looked at Saeran, who shook his head.
“It is. My therapist told me that extreme trauma can cause physiological reactions.” Saeran felt sick as he said them.
“Then… Then you’re sure?”
Saeran slipped on the sweater he’d thrown on the ground. “Yes.”
“We have to tell the members about this.” Saeyoung breathed, utterly overwhelmed. He could barely imagine sweet, bright MC turn to the state she was in now. His mind simply refused to believe it.
But Saeran did. Saeran knew more than anyone what it felt like to be in the dark: to know it more than yourself, to be a prisoner in your own head.
Only you can set yourself free, but to hell with it if you were going to figure this all out on your own.
“I agree, Saeran says as he plucks his keys off the counter. “But MC has to do it herself.”
As Saeran leaves, he promises to himself that he will not be returning without you in tow. His brother hadn’t given up on him back then, and whatever Zen decides to do once MC reveals everything, Saeran wasn’t giving up on you.
Saeran allowed himself one last look at the small, beaten notebook before throwing the car on drive.
I’m not giving up on you. So for fuck’s sake, neither should you.
[Would you mind reading my response? See, a lot of things have happened.]
This is bad, Part II ended up going way past my 5k-words limit. I hope you still somehow enjoyed the long read!
Look forward to Part III ♥
