THE BROTHERS | NCT BXB

9: Interlude

8 MONTHS AGO: 14 HOURS BEFORE THE BOAT

When Taeyong was five, he'd gotten in trouble at school. He'd clutched tiny rails and climbed to the top of the ladder on the slide, where he pushed down a girl who'd stolen his toy. He'd stood and stilled at the top, staring down at her twisted ankles and watched in silence as she cried.

At the age of seven, he took a pair of scissors and cut another boy's hair after he scribbled black crayon all over his work during class and said he didn't want to be his friend.

At nine, he'd closed his eyes and opened them to find small bits of red on his hands that he hadn't known where they came from. Later, he'd found a dead mouse in the garden with his favourite pencil through its stomach.

At twelve, he'd cut the brakes on his cousin Jongsuk's bike tyres the day after he'd kicked him in the stomach and called him a girl. Jongsuk had hit a car, and Taeyong's mother had hugged him and whispered the news as she stroked his matted hair that Jongsuk couldn't walk. Their family hadn't visited again.

At fifteen, Taeyong was suspended from school for a month when he'd kept a stolen epi-pen in his pocket as he watched the classmate who'd dunked his head in the toilet react to a peanut allergy. They sat him down and told him he was erratic. He was haphazard. He was a danger to himself and others. His father had beat him black and blue and then beat his mother, too, for giving birth to a freak.

The last time he'd hurt someone hadn't been on purpose. They had never been on purpose. Sometimes, he'd black out and wake up to find he'd done something wrong. Sometimes, he'd close his eyes and open them to find red on his hands from where he'd hurt himself — from where he'd hurt others. And sometimes, instead, he'd feel it coming — that pressure swathing around him, in his head, in his throat, tendrils wrapping around him and dredges of darkness at the sides of his eyes. It'd been like that the day he'd woken up in the holiday cabin with the bed empty next to him, free of Minjae. But he'd deserved it. He'd deserved it after Minjae had found him nights before pressed against the wall of a bathroom during a gala charity event with his brother, Changwook, back to front, skin to skin, bruising hands dug into Taeyong's waist and slipping down his pants, with his second palm stealing every wisp of oxygen Taeyong had to breathe — to scream. Whispers of threats, of ways to enjoy it, of soft kisses and hot breaths against his neck telling him to be quiet as nails dug into the thick of his skin. Minjae had said nothing when he'd found them together, and he'd said nothing, too, when they'd left for home in the back of a dark car.

He was still silent about it a week later when he decided to plan a small trip: a secluded getaway in an upscale wooden cabin, followed by a one week cruise. But Taeyong had felt it — those pinpricks of terror under his skin like needles as he waited for the other shoe to drop. For Minjae to react. For Minjae to hurt.

Nothing came.

It wasn't until the last day left in the cabin that he faced the consequences for cheating. Taeyong stood from the vast bed, where he'd spent the previous night naked and alone, and trudged out of their cold bedroom to find him. He arrived at the pool room and found Minjae pulling himself out of the water. Tall. Broad. Lean. Water glistened against his torso as he cricked his neck from side to side in the suffocating silence that he'd held up over the week, blind and uncaring of Taeyong's presence. And then, Taeyong caught a glimpse of it, chest tightening: a red mark on his neck. A hickey. But they hadn't slept together. Minjae hadn't been in the cabin the previous night. He'd gone out and left Taeyong alone. And the feelings had come back again then, all of a sudden, in a rush, of abandonment, of brokenness, of hurt, of that sick monster he'd kept hidden harboured inside of him. Finally, Minjae had walked up to him, each step heavier than the last, and curled a hand at the back of Taeyong's hair and tugged sharply as he raked his eyes down over him. His eyes were dark. Mean. Unloving. And then came Taeyong's punishment.