𝙈𝙄𝙎𝙎 / Chanbaek.

I

It was dark. Uncomfortably so.
The only light buzzed from a distant, broken, neon sign. Dimmed by thick and desolate cobwebs, it hummed and flickered to itself in the dim.
And still, it glowed, after decades of it's overlooked, pinkish ambiance, it still lit that desolated alleyway, behind that old, empty café, it's curtains drawn.
It still sent out waves of colour- to reflect atop wet, dampened concrete- the puddles shining fluorescent as they quivered with the cold.

It's hissing tune met ears of a boy clad fully in black. Black button-down, black leather boots.

A sticky, molten scarlet tainted the skin of those black, black boots- it's barely-fluid body slashed across the sides and top- staining the taught laces a sinister red.
He wondered how he had even gotten there, into that exact position- stoic, petrified, paralysed by a sheer unwillingness to continue. His humanity's final effort was just screaming into his ears to run. To escape.

Run.
It's an odd response to mystery. Almost a disinterest in learning something new. In exploration. Maybe it was solely because the average person would remain blissful, relaxed in that familiar, comforting haze of unknowing, especially when seeing what he was currently seeing.
Those two, haunting, glistening, white eyes which burnt out from the grappling shadows, that piercing, unblinking glare which followed his every, stuttered breath like a dying hawk.

And yet, sadly, twenty-three year old Byun Baekhyun was not your average person.

Well, he was, before that thing arrived.

"BYUN!" Yelled an abrasive, old wheeze of smoker's cough, snapping him out of his daze.

The boy in question jerked his head up in an instant, away from his beige, apron-adjourned lap, to look over at the ever-shouting café chef.
"What?!" He then exclaimed, snapping at the abhorrent interruption, his sleepy eyes now widened with frustration, as a tight-lipped grimace was quickly set upon level, porcelain skin.
He could see his expression in the scratched, silver countertops of the old kitchen.

The cook sinisterly shifted into a glower.
"What was that, Twerp?" The man oozed, a singular, greasy eyebrow affirmed into an irritated, challenging arch.
He spat as he spoke.

Baekhyun swore under his breath, the humid, metallic rainstorm crashing about outside helpfully sheltering the offensive sound.
"Sorry, Sir. Yes, sir?" He then barked, plain-faced, making the boss show an ugly, cocky grin of satisfaction.
"That attitude is coming out of your pay check, young man." He then smirked, slamming a large, sharpened butchers' knife into a bloodied, wooden chopping-board below.
It groaned, making Baekhyun wince.

"Now get out there and look pretty." The boy's boss then grunted out, sending a headstrong nod towards two thin, double doors- leading further into the customer floor.
It was the only café in their small, damp, foliage-sheltered town.

The shorter quickly made his way out of the stuffy, dirtied room, grumbling.
He'd much rather stay in the kitchen really, as insolent and as bigoted as the cook was.
Thing is, business was slow. Irritatingly slow.
There was never anything new to say nor anyone new to see- it seemed the whiskey brown-haired waiter had been cursed by some cryptic forest god to make drawling conversation with some perverse, greying odd-bodies for eternity.

This town was behind on many things. Technology, population, politics.
Surely things here should have changed-could've progressed along with the liberating modern world, but alas, identical days crawled by within an infinite loop of an identical, grey sun, reflecting the same norms of some sixties' residential; a wood-guarded town, cursed to remain drenched in constant, bitter rainfall.

Baekhyun sighed as he felt the influx of the communal chatter fill his mind.
No one glanced over at the flapping doors in which he stood between, they never did.
Matte, torn, vinyl tiles covered the floor delicately, coated by a soggy, crossing of footprints that darkened the already muted colours.
He'd have to clean those up later.