@bodiache / dongheon’s apartment, 4:15 am.
it’s cold. the kind of cold that seeps past numb and into pain. jinsol can feel it as he walks. it gnaws at bones and lives underneath his skin. the kind of cold that feels impossible to shake, where you start to wonder if you’ll ever be rid of it. there’s a tremble to his hands, though he can’t say with all certainty that it’s due to wandering winter in too few layers. because there’s that fear. a constant worry that burrows in past his skull, nestles deep in his mind. an infestation that settles and rots.
where have i been? what have done? for how long?
in a loop, he questions himself. it’s not a new occurrence, but it is unwelcomed. and it’s been a while, hasn’t it - since the last blackout? wandering alone and dazed, half-asleep with faded memories that worry away at him. until he finds it in himself to shove them all away, turn a blind eye, carry on.
he doesn’t want to go back, after all. doesn’t want to confront that innate wrongness he seems to have been born with. an inescapable evil. people already look at him strange enough. and sometimes with hatred. usually those that know him too well. and that’s a little funny, isn’t it? how the better people seem to know him the more apprehensive they become. the more they want distance. the more they resent.
and it’s entirely the reason that jinsol ends up at dongheon’s apartment at exactly four-fifteen in the morning. who else would take him in at such an odd hour? in fact, who else would take him in at all? especially with his hair a wild mess and dirt smeared across his face. a shivering mess of his own bones rattling around in his body. matches the chatter of his teeth, off-beat and off-kilter. there might be blood; his own, he thinks. puzzled that on his walk over. maybe brambles that dug deep in his arms, could have tangled into a bush or two while he’d been sleepwalking in the woods (he refuses to call it by any other name, as incorrect as that one is).
it takes jinsol three times before he correctly keys the right apartment number into the buzzer. curls his arms in on himself and waits to see if the camera will click on, if dongheon’s at the other end eying who showed up at his doorstep. eventually, it flickers to life. a tiny picture of his face, and jinsol tries to swallow back his own apprehension.
“i think i need help.”
the words shiver out fractured, but audible.
