Mi Appartieni

Chapter Twenty

       It's been nearly two months now since Joshua had been home and it was becoming a common occurrence for him to keep needing to finding logical explanations for the weird things happening to him.

The business at his cafe never died down. The first day wasn't just a one off for having been closed for nearly a month. It was as if everyday there were more and more customers.

For the first time Joshua actually had to hire staff. He told himself that it was because a cafe close to his closed its doors shortly after Joshua reopened his.

However; that didn't really explain it all. The cafe that closed was extremely popular. They were even featured on the food network for their pastries.

How could such a popular place close so suddenly and without notice? Joshua's explanation was that maybe they weren't doing as well financially as they seemed to be.

Also, Joshua kept getting that strange feeling of being watched everywhere he went. The feeling lingered even while he was at home. His explanation for that was his continuous lack of sleep. He feels like it was making him paranoid.

After several weeks of only a few hours of sleep each night, Joshua finally saw his doctor who prescribed him sleeping pills. He guesses they worked. Joshua went from two hours of sleep a night to four.

He still struggled without Seokmin's presence and he was still plagued by the same nightmare of Seokmin dying. At least now though he felt less crazy with slightly more sleep.

On a particularly bad night where not even the sleeping bills could bring him even an hour of rest, Joshua found himself needing to go take a walk.

He was bundled up, protecting himself from the cool late autumn air as he walked through Boston Common. It had been a long time since he walked through here. Maybe he would ask Jeonghan out to lunch soon and they could take a walk through here together.

Joshua sits on a bench and pulls out his phone. He scrolls through his for you page on instagram, watching random videos as his breath fills the night sky.

He hears a commotion just then. "H-Hey! Lets ask that guy!" Joshua looks around in confusion and sees a group of four young men stumbling toward him. They looked like college students and were clearly drunk from a night out at the bars.

"Hey! Settle a bet for us!" One of them slurs. Another one smashes a glass beer bottle on the ground. Joshua gasps at the loud noise. He doesn't feel right about this.

He gets up and quickly starts walking away from the group. "Hey!" One of them says more angrily, "What're you walking away from us for?!" "Catch up to him." The four of them begin running after Joshua. Joshua gasps and starts running too.

At nearly thirty years old, Joshua is unable to outrun a group of young college students. They catch up to him. One of them grabs Joshua's arm and pulls hard making him fall to the ground.

Joshua immediately scrambles to his feet but another one grabs his wrists, stopping him from running away.

"What're you running for?" He says angrily as he grips Joshua's wrists impossibly tight. "We just wanted to ask you something. No need to be rude." "I-I'm sorry." Joshua chokes out.

The guy pushes Joshua roughly making him fall to the ground again. Another one winds up his leg, getting ready to kick Joshua in the head.

Joshua squeezes his eyes shut and covers his head. He waits for the pain but nothing happens. He slowly removes his arms and opens his eyes.

The guy that was about to kick Joshua is now in a throat crushing headlock from a large man in all black.

Joshua gaps. He recognizes this person. He's the scary looking man who asked Joshua what happened to his hand that day in the cafe. The college kid's face is red as he weakly tries to pry the man's arms off him.