CRIMINAL // minsung

chapter 30

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There's no mercy in what Minho does, as per usual.

The difference is that this time, there's no mind to it either. He's not thinking like he usually is, sick in the most intoxicating sense he knows of. This was not intoxicating or pleasurable in the least, the way his knife jams on a muscle when he wants it to slide or the screams that only make him want to buy earplugs.

And this was the second time already, after the rain, that he's done this. He was alone, had heard enough of Changbin's warnings and reminders of needing to lay low. Why should he care about that anymore? There was no one bothering to chase him now.
Right.

The sound of someone dying doesn't give him the relief of zero thoughts anymore and he grunts in displeasure as the body falls lifeless on the ground. He doesn't bother to clean up, he's stuck in his own head, and everything reminds him of how much better things would be if his detective was still there trying to talk him out of it and failing miserably.

It's almost to the point where it physically hurts and he feels the need to claw at his own chest to let it out. He doesn't, instead makes his hands into tight fists to suppress the urge, because that would be a little pathetic even for him.

Perhaps he was doing this now to try and convince himself that he is not someone who can be loved;
to convince himself there is no way Han loves him.
Because maybe if he managed to really get that into his head, maybe, the guilt could loosen its grip on Minho's lungs.

If not, he fears the grip will instead only tighten and eventually crush them.

He tries not to wonder how Han is doing. That only makes him want to shove his knife back into the already dead body, which would not benefit him in any way.

_______________________________________

The wounds on Jisung's face have started to heal. He looks at them through his foggy bathroom mirror as he cleans them, and it stings, but not as much as it used to.

Somehow that makes him more upset than happy.

Because he's grown fond of the bruises and the cuts. They're real, the pain is real, and it grounds him, reminds him that he is real, too. What happened to him was real.
Minho was real.

His memories are sugar-coated with sickly sweet pain, and he revels in them when he's alone, when Felix isn't breathing down his neck trying to pry them out of him.

The rainwater had tasted salty in a particular moment he goes back to. The night his wounds were born and he had kissed Minho.

He can't decide whether that is actually his favorite though.
He treasures another one too, one that's less painful, which might be the reason it's not the most prominent. But it's there, the morning he'd laid in Minho's bed, wrapped up in his multiple-sizes-too-big hoodie. Everything had smelled like him, warm and comfortable. He'd laid right next to Minho, and under the sunlight the other's features had been soft like a kitten's fur. Han remembers his parted lips, his long eyelashes that tickled his cheeks, the small mole on the side on his nostril.

Maybe that one would be his favorite, if he wasn't left scarred by everything else. Maybe in some other universe, they're still laying there together, content and oblivious of any pain.

But it's kind of funny he's attached himself to pain rather than those -  admittedly short- but happy moments. There might be something wrong with him, he thinks.

But nothing at all was his fault. Not the inhumane way Minho treated him or the coping mechanisms his brain has developed to protect him. The side of himself that he now fears, the side which Minho awakened in him and made him slice an alive man's skin into a bleeding mess, was probably just that: a coping mechanism. Resistance didn't get him anywhere and caused him suffering, so complying is what he had to go with to stay alive, at least.
The thing is, and it's starting to dawn on Han just now, that this is exactly how people go insane.

Aren't most mental wards filled with trauma patients?
Han's thoughts start to wander as if he wasn't scared enough before.
If he ever tells Felix anything, this part will be left out.

But without the pain, he only a faint shadow of what he used to be; or at least that's what he feels like.
Because the pain reminds him of love (those two are dangerously similar to each other in his head).
It reminds him of Minho.

He'd rather the cut on his cheek never heals, but he dabs the soft, disinfectant-soaked cotton against it anyway. At least it still stings a little bit, and some parts of Han find enough strength in that to take him to work today.

"Hey." Tanya flashes him a smile filled with veiled pity and Han struggles to return it. He's been lingering in his and Chan's shared office alone, staring at meaningless papers.

He dreads entering the lab;
Felix has turned into a raging storm and grabbed Seungmin with him, too.

Han has worked his way around all questions so far.

"Who did this to you?" The night Han appeared on the parking lot.

"Where were they keeping you? How many of them were there? What did they look like?" The following day.

"Why did Hyunjin warn you about Chan? Do you know each other? How is Chan related to all of this? And don't lie to me, because I know he is." Yesterday.

Han doesn’t know most of what Felix is doing and neither does he want to; he knows Felix’s anger is justified, but that doesn’t stop it from bothering him. Of course Felix would try to figure out what’s happened, he feels confused and betrayed out of his mind, but Han just doesn’t want to have to explain to the other why he isn’t feeling the same way or willing to provide answers. He's not even sure himself.
When he finally does enter the lab, the only face he’s met with is Seungmin’s. The other has his round glasses a little tilted over his nose that’s buried in his laptop.

“where’s Lix?” Han asks, and Seungmin looks like that’s the last question he wants to give Han the answer to.

Down the hall, one turn left, Felix is sitting in the cold, cruel interrogation room, staring at Chan across the metal table that the other's hands cuffed to.

A shiver runs through him as Chan lifts his accusing gaze from the table and directs it towards him.

~

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