ENG - Fractured Fates ʰʸᵘⁿˡᶦˣ

31

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Felix POV

The following morning, Hyunjin was already waiting outside Jisung's door to pick me up. Together we made our way to my home, while I still felt completely overwhelmed in this confusing situation.
I could feel my hands shaking and my stomach tightening as I thought about everything that had happened. Overnight, my life seemed to have turned into a nightmare where I was being listened to and tracked by implanted listening bugs. I felt like I was trapped in a bad movie and didn't know how to deal with it. The whole thing was so surreal and absurd that I wondered if maybe I was still asleep and this was all just a bad dream.
Since I had been forced to call in sick at work, I was also alone with Hyunjin that day. He was sitting on the couch, engrossed in his cell phone and presented me with an all-too-familiar image: him with his cell phone in his hand and his eyes fixed on the display. I really wondered what it was that captivated him so much that he could stare at this little device for hours on end.

In the meantime, I stood in the kitchen and made myself a cup of chamomile tea. My body was aching for relaxation as I had been suffering from constant tension for days. My muscles were tense and my heart had been beating restlessly in my chest for days.
My gaze wandered to the red-haired man on the couch and I looked at his face, which seemed so innocent and pure. His skin was pale and flawless and his eyes were framed by thick lashes. It was still incomprehensible to me that this handsome guy, who looked so harmless, wanted to kill me.
I couldn't deny that I was still terrified of him and had barely spoken a word since. The fear of saying the wrong thing and challenging his unstable irritability kept me from speaking.

As I lifted the cup and slowly brought it to my lips to take a sip, I suddenly noticed a tingling sensation in my fingers. The tingling became stronger and developed into a numbness in my right hand. The cup slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor, the scalding hot liquid spilling out and spreading across the cold tiles.
With a dull bang, the cup shattered into pieces and I hissed painfully as the hot liquid came into contact with my bare feet. The pain shot through my legs like a bolt of lightning, causing me to lose my balance for a moment and I landed roughly on my bottom. A feeling of pain rose up inside me and I closed my eyes and breathed deeply to endure the pain.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw Hyunjin kneeling right in front of me, looking at me. "Everything okay? Let me see," he said and reached for my hand. A shiver ran through my body at his touch and panic broke out in me, bringing beads of sweat to my forehead. Completely oblivious to the fact that my feet were burning and my hand was numb, I reacted instinctively and slapped his hand away with all my might.
With a panicked look in my eyes, I scrambled backwards against the kitchen cupboard, my breathing getting faster and faster and my heartbeat pounding louder and louder in my ears. "Don't touch me!" I suddenly screamed without really realizing it and started to cry. My voice sounded shrill and desperate and I could feel tears running uncontrollably down my cheeks.
Yes, I was crying and only because of this guy who was kneeling in front of me and looking at me with a confused look. "Please... don't touch me," I repeated, letting out a sob before lifting my gaze and looking at him. "I'll really do anything you want. I'll never again..." I started, but my voice broke when I realized how much I was shaking. My hands clutched at my knees and I could feel my heartbeat getting faster and faster. "Please don't touch me," I repeated again, my voice a mere whisper.

My whole body shook uncontrollably as a sharp pain shot through my limbs. My heart raced wildly in my chest, as if it wanted to break free and flee from this unbearable situation. He looked at me with that jaded indifference he always had. A sigh escaped his lips as he rose with a slow, almost insultingly effortless elegance.
His eyes, as cold and empty as a winter landscape, betrayed not a hint of compassion or emotion as he spoke. "As you wish, I prefer it anyway," he said, dropping back onto the couch.
My eyes filled inexorably with tears that burned like glowing coals in my eye sockets and blocked my view of the world in front of me. I could feel them slowly running down my cheeks, leaving a trail of sadness and pain on my skin.
I wanted to scream, cry and beg for help, but my throat was tight. No sound would pass my lips, only a soft whimper escaped me.

It took me a while to just sit on the cold floor and cry in fear and despair. My tears dripped onto the floor and mixed with the shards of the broken cup. When I had calmed down a bit, I started to pick up the pieces with my left hand, as my right hand was still numb.
While I was still wiping away the liquid with tears in my eyes, I wished at that moment that my damn illness would just kill me on the spot. Then I wouldn't have to feel this incredible fear that was worse than anything I'd ever known. It ate into my innermost being, made me freeze and took away all my courage, all my hope.

About a month had passed since Hyunjin had moved in with me. A month that felt like an eternity, filled with silence. We hadn't spoken a single word to each other in that time. He had also been right: If I didn't see him right in front of me, I wouldn't even realize he was there.
Hyunjin was a quiet and extremely tidy roommate, something I would never have expected from him. I actually thought that my apartment would be in chaos, that his things would be scattered everywhere and that he wouldn't put them away. But instead, I got a pleasant surprise.
He didn't leave anything dirty and if he did, he put it away again immediately. He took care of his own food and actually gave me some money for the extra cost of his stay. But even these costs were so small due to his minimalist lifestyle that I hardly noticed them.

I continued to live my life as before. I didn't feel any restrictions that I had thought would affect me and I had almost completely forgotten about the little device behind my ear. I continued to go to work as normal or meet up with Jisung, who I heard was in a similar situation to me.
As time went on, I felt less and less anxiety towards Hyunjin, which was probably because we didn't talk to each other or see each other very often. Our interactions were limited to sparse notes stuck to the fridge.
He mainly left the apartment at night and came back early in the morning when I left for work. And yet I got used to his silent presence, to the quiet noises he made when he walked through the apartment, to the feeling that I was no longer alone.

One night, I was woken from my sleep by loud, eerie noises. My heart raced as I sat upright in my bed and stared at the door with strained eyes, afraid that someone was about to come in. My eyes flitted to the clock on my bedside table: it was only 2:48 am. Hyunjin certainly wasn't there yet; he usually came back in the morning, just before I left the apartment.
So was it a burglar?
And if so, why me of all people?
Another noise made me flinch. It sounded as if something heavy had fallen to the floor. My thoughts raced as I tried to calm my breathing. What was I supposed to do now?

With trembling hands and as quietly as possible, I crept to the door and carefully opened it a crack to look out into the dark hallway. When I looked out, I saw nothing but the faint light coming from the bathroom.
My heart pounded in my ears as I decided to leave my room and check. After all, it couldn't be any worse than having a gun held to your head and being threatened with death, could it?
So I plucked up all my courage and crept towards the light in the bathroom. On my way there, I passed the kitchen and saw that the drawer had been ripped out and its contents were scattered on the floor. But it wasn't just the contents of the drawer that caught my eye, there was also a dark liquid spreading across the floor.
A trail of blood that led straight to the bathroom.

My eyes widened and I immediately rushed into the bathroom. I rushed in and my heart stopped for a moment when I saw Hyunjin sitting on the floor, his head hanging and surrounded by a pool of blood.
My heart started beating like crazy, as if it wanted to jump out of my chest and an uncontrollable trembling spread through my body. Without thinking, I knelt down next to him and took his face in my hands to see if he was still conscious. His skin felt cold and damp and I could see the color draining from his face.
"Hyunjin?" I asked him in a shaky voice, looking at him worriedly as he didn't respond. "Hey, you can't fall asleep now, understand?" I tried again and shook him a little. My eyes searched his body to find out where the blood was coming from, spreading like a red river on the white tiled floor.

He only made grumbling, low noises and I felt a wave of panic rise inside me, not knowing what to do. I had been trained for emergencies like this, after all I worked in a hospital, but I had never experienced one before and was completely lost. My head was like an empty, windswept wasteland.
Suddenly he lifted his head and leaned it against the wall behind him. He looked at me with half-open eyes marked by pain and fatigue. "You're a pathetic nurse," he croaked out in pain and I just smiled, overwhelmed and helpless like a child. "I know that myself," I said quickly and reached for towels that were in the cupboard next to us.
I pressed them to his stomach where the bleeding was coming from and tried to stop the blood flow. My hands shook as I tried to apply pressure and I could feel the warm, sticky blood seeping through my fingers and staining the white towels.

Tears of desperation and overwhelm welled up in my eyes, flooding my irises and starting to flow like little rivulets down my cheeks. My heart raced and my hands trembled as I tried to stop the blood flowing from his wound. What was I supposed to do now? I couldn't let him die, but he was bleeding so much that the towel was already completely soaked.
"Take a deep breath," I suddenly heard him say quietly, but his words were almost drowned out by the loud rush of blood in my ears. When I felt his cool hand on my cheek, I flinched, startled, and finally looked at him. His face was pale, paler than usual and his red hair was sticking to his forehead, which was covered in sweat.
"Take a deep breath and calm down, ... then you'll stop the bleeding and stitch it up," he croaked weakly, breathing shallowly. As weak as he was, he must have already lost far too much blood. It was a miracle that he was still conscious at all.

My eyes fell back on the gaping wound on his stomach, where I took a new towel from the cupboard next to us and pressed it to the wound with trembling hands. Impossible! How was I supposed to calm down in a situation like this? More tears escaped my eyes - tears of helplessness and fear. I was desperate and my pounding head wasn't making it any better.
"Hey," he whispered softly, lifting my chin so I had to look at him again. "Look at me and breathe," he repeated weakly. As I pressed the towel to his wound, I looked directly at him and tried to focus only on his eyes, which were soothing despite the pain. As if of its own accord, my frantic breathing slowly calmed down and after a few deep breaths, I became calmer.
"Now go get something to stitch up, I didn't find anything," he continued to croak weakly and removed his hand from my face to press it down on the towel himself so I could stand up.

I took a deep breath and then slowly detached myself from him to fetch the first aid kit from the storeroom. My father had given me a huge red suitcase when I moved into my own apartment, filled with all the necessary medical paraphernalia and much more, as if I wanted to operate on myself at some point.
The suitcase was so big and unwieldy that I hadn't found anywhere else to put it except in this storage room. I remembered my father carefully putting every single item together and at the time I thought it was overkill - but at that moment I was immensely grateful for it and maybe it would even save someone's life now.

With the huge suitcase in my hand, swinging against my legs, I hurried back into the bathroom, which was filled with the cold, harsh light of the fluorescent tubes. I opened the suitcase and frantically searched through it for something that would stop the bleeding better than a simple towel.
My hands shook as I took out the sterile gauze compresses and replaced the blood-soaked towel with them. "Wouldn't it be better to call an ambulance?" I asked uncertainly as I pressed on the bleeding, my voice shaking with panic. "I've never done anything like this before."
He replied quietly but firmly: "Not a doctor." His voice sounded weak and so broken that it almost tore my heart apart. "Just give me some painkillers and close it up," he added and I looked at him worriedly. He couldn't really mean that!

But instead of contradicting him, I helped him to lie carefully on his back so that I could pull his soaked top up. When I saw the bleeding wound, I immediately felt sick and had to swallow hard to avoid throwing up straight away. The sight of open wounds and so much blood made me freeze, even though I worked in a hospital.
But I pulled myself together and took a deep breath so that I didn't fall back into complete panic. My hands were shaking as I desperately grabbed whatever I could on the wound to stop the bleeding. My head was blank, my mind spinning as I hoped that some of this was helping.

After the blood finally began to stop after what seemed like an interminable amount of time, I carefully lifted the blood-soaked cloths from Hyunjin's wound. They stuck to his skin and I had to pull myself together not to recoil in disgust.
With a wet splash, the cloths fell onto the tiled floor next to me, leaving a dark stain on the floor. The sound of the cloths hitting the floor sent a shiver down my spine and nausea rose in my throat again.
As sorry as I felt for Hyunjin, as I really wanted to help him, I had to get to the toilet fast as I could to throw up. My stomach clenched as I bent over the bowl and my body emptied itself. The mass of blood, the sight of his injured skin - it was all too much for me and the sound of the soaked cloths finally gave me the rest.

Once I had calmed down and nothing more came up, I pressed the flush and crawled almost pitifully back to Hyunjin. He was still lying there completely motionless, his eyes closed, his breathing barely perceptible. His skin was so pale that it seemed almost transparent and it felt ice-cold when I carefully placed my hand on his forehead. He had obviously lost consciousness due to the loss of blood.
I could see his chest slowly rising and falling and I could feel my own heart beating painfully against my ribs. I was scared, I was really scared that he might die.
Maybe I should call an ambulance after all?

In my panic, which pushed away any clear thoughts, I didn't call the emergency services, which would undoubtedly have been the right decision in this situation. Instead, I woke Jisung from his sleep and ordered him to come to me as quickly as possible in a trembling voice. He definitely had stronger nerves for it and knew what to do much better than I did. Luckily, he didn't live on the other side of town, but just a few streets away and could hopefully be here quickly.
My father, who lived just a few houses away, would probably have been a better choice than Jisung. He could have been with me faster, but the idea of dragging him deeper into the chaos that this red-haired man had brought into my life, a chaos that I didn't understand myself, made me freeze.
A cold shiver ran down my spine as I imagined how I would have to explain everything to him and then watch as he inevitably called the police. It was a risk I couldn't take, a risk that could have fatal consequences for us all. So I had no choice but to hope for Jisung.

While I waited for him to arrive, I pressed more cloths against Hyunjin's wound in the desperate hope of stemming the bleeding. I was afraid that the bleeding could start again at any time and I wanted to prevent that as much as I could.
I forced myself not to look, squeezed my eyes tightly shut and pressed my mouth against my shoulder to stop the nausea that threatened to overwhelm me. The metallic smell of blood that filled the air, however, made it almost impossible for me to keep the contents of my stomach in.
My hands were shaking uncontrollably and my heart was pounding in my throat. I prayed fervently that Jisung would make it here in time to help Hyunjin. Every second that passed seemed to take an eternity - an eternity filled with the agonizing uncertainty and fear that Hyunjin might die under my hands.

When the long-awaited doorbell rang, my heart raced with excitement and I sprinted to the door. With a trembling hand, I opened the door and Jisung rushed in with Minho. Without saying a word, they ran straight for the bathroom, which was filled with an ominous silence.
I hesitantly followed them and stopped in the doorway, as there was nothing I could have done anyway except hold back the vomit. "What happened?" Minho asked me in a voice quivering with anger and despair. His eyes bored into mine as if he was trying to pull the answer right out of there. I could feel my throat constricting and tears started to run from my eyes again.
I shrugged my shoulders, unable to come up with an explanation for this. "I don't know," I whispered quietly, my voice barely more than a breath. "I found him like this."

My gaze dropped heavily to my hands, which were completely covered in blood up to my elbows. My sweatpants and T-shirt were also stained with blood as if they were my own.
When I looked up again, I saw Jisung changing the cloths with a calm determination and cleaning Hyunjin's wound with the utensils from the first aid kit. His hands weren't shaking like mine had been. Even Minho's hands were incredibly still and he looked like he had years of experience. They knew exactly what they were doing and that somehow reassured me.

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