8 is fate // Stray Kids

30

Minho

Blood ran down Minho's arm, winding around his hand and dripping off his fingers onto the cold hard ground.

His breath came quick and ragged.

Exhaustion tugged at his body, but the pure adrenaline pumping through his veins was enough to cast the feeling away. At least for now.

Minho looked at the outlast in front of him. Disgusting creatures they were, basically walking corpses. They didn't feel pain or anything else.

At that moment, Minho didn't feel all that different from the undead. He had been a mere shadow of himself these past days, pretty much acting like a living dead himself. Soulless.

His body was heavy from overexertion, his emotions numb from burying them, his thoughts cloudy from tuning them out.

Minho blinked a couple of times, catching his thoughts drifting off topic and forced his attention back onto the enemy in front of him.

Outlasts were relentless fighters, the only way to kill them was to separate their head from their body and destroy it. Burning or crushing worked the best.

They were annoying creatures but relatively easy to fight if you carried the knowledge of how to kill them. They were all brawn and no brains.

Usually, Minho would have beat him in under three minutes, but nothing was usual these days.

Especially Minho.

Three days.

Three days since the incident.
Three days since Minho had left.
Three days since Minho had eaten.
Three days since Minho had slept, rested.
Three days in which Minho hadn't allowed himself to feel a thing.

He had wandered through the streets of Miroh nonstop, searching for followers of the Eighth to fight.

One after the other, he had fought with his bare hands.

Only with his bare hands because he strongly believed he didn't deserve otherwise.

How could he use the same claws he had used to slit Han's throat?

How could he use the knives that had been a gift from that very human?

How could he use his lightning-powers when he was such a horrible person, a monster?

No, his bare hands were the only thing he deserved. Fighting the way, the boy he had almost killed did.

Minho was covered with gory substances from head to toe. He knew the stench must have been abdominal, but he didn't notice it anymore, having already gotten used to it. He was also aware that he must look like a creature straight out of the Abyss, but he didn't find it in him to care.

He didn't find it in him to care for anything in general.

Because once he started to let that emotion back in, he knew there was no stopping it.

As soon as he got a second to breathe, a minute to rest, it all came flooding back.

He could see how the beautiful gold of Han's irises started to dull.

He could see the deep red liquid spilling out between his fingers. See how with every drop of blood the color of his skin seemed to drain with it.

He would remember how Han had reassuringly stroked his wrist as if to tell him that it was fine.

He-

A whirlpool made of pure guilt seized him. It spiraled down rapidly, dragging him deeper and deeper until there was not a single ray of light left. Until he was swallowed whole by darkness. Until his own self-loathing seeped into his respiratory system, infiltrated his lungs, choking him, suffocating him, and, over time, it would drown him.