Meridian ◈ Seungjin

Epilogue ◈ The Bogeyman

Some of you wanted this.

Forewarning: Some minor hyunsung and 2min tucked away in there but you didn't hear it from me because the situation ain't it 🤡

The dark of his dorm room crowded around him as he laid motionless on his side, his muscles numb to the river his weight crested on the plush mattress holding him from falling completely to the jaws waiting below him. Holding him from slipping farther into the sinking of the bunk bed, threatening to gobble him whole. Teasing him, and taunting him, faking the protective shield from the crawling lurk of the shadows in the corners when the consuming feeling of the mattress around him only suffocated his chest against his heavy breaths.

Seungmin clawed his hands at the sheets beneath him, his eyes watching the fabric as it bunched up in his weak grip and staring vacantly at the wall of the dorm room behind him. Then the fabric  released. He kneaded at the sheets for some sense of comfort, some sense of familiarity, some sense of peace against the whispering tremors of the shadows dancing around him. They seemed to grab and rake at his skin. The hands which reached from the dark.

He curled himself up on the bedsheets as he sucked in a sharp breath and tried to relax the pounding in his chest.

The window creaked for a moment.

The shadow casted against the wall he faced.

His heart stopped.

Someone's in the room.

He held his breath as they walked to his bedside. Their weight depressed the edge of his mattress as they sat.

Seungmin whispered, "Leave me alone."

He couldn't move.

"Seungmin."

That voice.

It didn't match his memories.

The shadows moved as a palm pressed into his side, sliding up to the shoulder that curled and shivered away from the figure smiling at him through the dark. Smirking wide around the blood soaked fangs.

"I should have killed you."

His heart thundered in his ears.

No.

The claws raked into his throat.

They squeezed down, suffocating him.

He grabbed at the hands tearing into his throat, voice choking as he tried to kick the shadow off with a shrill scream, "No!"

"Seungmin, woah! It's okay! Calm down, it's just us," A comforting voice told him as the light poured red onto the tightly shut blind if his eyelids, the scent of a gentle sea breeze wafting in along with the soft rustling of papers a distance from him. His wrists were gripped not by claws or oppressive talons, but by a soft loop of fingers barely holding on, barely touching him as the person dodged his flurry of kicks with a skillful jump off the mattress. Still, the weight came back to sit closer to Seungmin as his onslaught of panicked breathes wouldn't calm and his heart wouldn't stop thundering in his ears. Even as he tried to kick and punch, the other person just continued to coddle him with a quiet tone, "It's just us. It was just a bad dream. Just another nightmare. It's not real."

His tensed hands were guided to grip onto the person's puffy hair, the soft felt against the clammy discomfort of his fingers refusing to move. But the pliable cascade was there. Brushing against his fingertips. The silky smooth of each individual hair combed down to fit on the person's scalp. Like the riveting flush of river water running between his fingertips as he stood swamped in a flood of nausea. Slowly, as his furious heartbeat tried to settle in his chest and the feral breaths ripping his lungs began to even out, the locked joints in his fingers moved to tangle into the smooth of the hair he was guided to.