Talk Nerdy to Me

Chapter 5: Aftermath

Summary:

After the assault, Chris, Changbin, and Felix take care of Ra.

Chapter Text

The three men were escorted out one by one. Two were the ones who had chased her down, one was one of her former students. She choked back a sob. She wrapped the blanket around her like a shield, and started examining Changbin's injuries. He'd been hit with the bat in the head, but not hard enough to do more than a goose egg. He had a few scrapes, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

Chris, on the other hand, looked like he'd walked into the knife fight not thinking he'd survive it. Ra went to her kitchen and found her hand towels, pressing it again the worst of the wound in his side. Not a stab wound, but long and shallow. He looked surprised for a moment.

"Ra..."

"You got hurt on account of me," she muttered, a strong Southern accent coloring the English. She swallowed hard, holding the cloth. "I should have..."

What? She should have what? Been more careful about who she taught? Never come to Korea? Let them have their way with her?

"Ra, this is not your fault," Chris said, bucking her face up by her chin.

Ra wished she could believe him. The police officers drew her attention, and she quietly answered their questions. They took her ruined clothes as evidence, letting her get dressed again in her bathroom. She was told to gather what she wanted as she wasn't allowed back there until they finished processing the crime scene. She packed a backpack mechanically with a couple changes of clothes, her phone charger, her laptop.

Chris and Changbin escorted her to a hospital. Ra blanked out on most of what occurred the rest of the day, her memories fuzzy in a haze of dissociation. She found herself at Chris' apartment that afternoon again, still not quite all there. Changbin had stuck around, and at some point Felix had arrived too.

Chris pressed a towel into her hands. He sounded far away. But she did grasp that he was telling her to go take a shower, something she desperately needed after all the testing at the hospital, and the afternoon.

She walked into his bathroom in a daze, and started the water. It took a bit to get it hot enough for her, but she was grateful for the lock on the door and a few moments peace again.

She climbed into the shower and did what she'd wanted to do since she first realized what had happened. She scrubbed every inch of her skin raw, reopening the knife wounds on her legs in a bid to get their hands, their dicks, get it off of her. She could scrub no more, and it killed her that she couldn't feel clean.

Ra sank down onto the floor of the shower, the nice clean tidy shower, and let the tears come again, mixing with the heat of the water. She tried her best to stay quiet. Even in her grief, she didn't want to burden the three men who were on the other side of the door, especially after two of them had been hurt because of her. She'd rather be dead in a ditch than to hurt a single hair on those kind boys' heads.

At last the tears stopped falling, the hiccups slowed. She had a headache coming on, probably from dehydration. She was sure even after the shower that she was a mess. But nothing more could be done about that. She cut the water off, drying on the fluffy towel Chris had pressed on her, combing her hair with her pocket comb. Her hair was getting too long for it again, but she definitely didn't have the money for a haircut right now. In fact, she wasn't even sure she wanted to look at her bank account.

All three men glanced up, Chris and Changbin from their phones on the couch, and Felix from the kitchen, when she came back into the room. She was wearing another t-shirt, this one with a dragon on it wrapped around a pile of books reading "It's Not Hoarding If It's Books," and a loose black hoodie. She'd pulled the hood up in a bid to hide how rough she looked.