fragments | bang chan

vii.

After holding the warm, moistened towel to your cut for a good half hour, you removed it completely and poked it with the tip of your finger, testing the pain. It stung horrendously as soon as your finger made contact with the open flesh and you grimaced at the gory sight. Blood had dripped down the side of your face despite your attempts to mop up the mess with the towel, which was also stained red. With a bad taste in your mouth, you realized that the once white towel was also a part of the housewarming gift from Chan's parents. Oh well.

You examined your wound further. While it was no longer oozing new blood, it wasn't even close to being scabbed over, and every time you moved your face it stung, reminding you of its presence. The cut was wide, exposing a lot of flesh, but it was shallow, and for that you were grateful. You tenderly dabbed some antibacterial ointment onto it and covered it with a bandage, but quickly decided against the bandage and slowly tore it off, as it had clung to your skin in all the wrong ways and was pulling it every time you moved your face. You knew that it would loosen itself in just a few minutes, so what was the point of keeping it on?

You tossed the bandage into the trash and scanned the bathroom with sharp eyes, taking in the new mess you had made after injuring yourself. Scattered drops of blood littered the tile floor, and the used, stained towel was resting on the counter, dripping a mixture of water and blood. You took it upon yourself to clean up after your accident, starting with discarding the pile of glass that was still residing in the dustpan.

Soaking the towel in a mixture of cold water and hydrogen peroxide was the surest way to get the bloodstains out, but you were well aware of the fact that the snow-white towel would never return to its former glory, and you felt a slight pang of guilt. After all, they had been pretty nice towels. You watched the small hand towel bob up and down in the sink, the hydrogen peroxide fizzing and foaming at the spots covered in red. Sighing, you looked in the mirror again and stared at your cut, the ointment glistening in the light.

Another accidental self-inflicted injury.

If Chan were here, he would have gently scolded you for being clumsy while cleaning your wound and kissing you to make you feel better.

Of course, that gentle side of Chan was a thing of the past. But you supposed that it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for him to come home and be concerned about your injury.

But explaining this one would be even more humiliating than the injury you had sustained during one of your and Chan's biggest fights. And that one was an embarrassing and heart wrenching memory that you had never brought up to anyone, not even to re-discuss with Chan.

No, that entire event was something that you hoped no one would ever find out about. The humiliation wasn't just from your injury, but a multitude of things stacked upon one another that made you tear up just thinking about it.

After your fight with Chan about him staying out too late, he promised you that he would come home earlier, and he would do his best to respond to your messages. But he also said that he wouldn't always be able to do so. Being an understanding person, you knew that this was coming, and you were fine with it, knowing that you could trust Chan with your whole heart. He had never broken a promise before, and he had given you no reason to distrust his words.

But even though he had stayed true to his word for the past few weeks, he was slowly starting to revert back to how he was before. He started staying at the studio later and later, and sometimes he would go out with Jisung and Changbin after they finished recording, either to clubs or somewhere else to just drink and 'relax'. He wouldn't show up until the early hours of the morning, either extremely moody and tired or too drunk to even know where he was, and you detested sleeping next to someone who stunk of alcohol. More and more often after Chan came home and settled into bed, you would either sneak out to the couch with a pillow and blanket to sleep there, to avoid the stench of a drunk man, or the cold emptiness of a moody one. You could feel yourself getting distant from him again but didn't know how to bring it up. You knew that he was putting his all into his work, and 3RACHA was starting to gain more and more attention. There were even rumors beginning to circulate that the three of them would be put into a real kpop band, just like Chan had been dreaming of for so many years.