Healing

XXVI - lies

Slowly, memories are being unlocked.

Bel, xx

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The night is suffocating, closing in on Jinyoung and making his thoughts spiral. He lies on his bed wide awake, his eyes glued to the ceiling as he feels the beating of his own heart roaring in his ears. At one point, he feels his palms tingling and a high-pitched sound ringing in his ears before the room starts to spin. Jinyoung has to force an arm over his eyes and switches on his bedside lamp until he has his feet on the wall to help him regulate his blood pressure after it suddenly drops. Stress and lack of sleep have always messed up his already irregular nervous system.

Hours go by, and Jinyoung is already dizzy after several drops in his blood pressure. If he trusted his legs to carry him, he'd come to the kitchen to eat something savoury, knowing that helps him when he's having dysautonomia episodes. Instead, the young man stays on his bed, drinking some lukewarm water he always keeps on the nightstand and focuses on breathing, hoping it'll help his nervous system, begging it to, please, just chill.

By the time dawn is breaking, the first warm light streaks are coming through the blinds he didn't close and Jinyoung is exhausted as if he had run a half marathon. The light coming in helps him calm down a bit, a reprieve from the darkness. That, in combination with how tired he is, helps him drift off.

Jinyoung should've guessed that if he fell asleep without the pills, he'd dream.

Actually, he has a nightmare in which Jaebeom's warmth completely vanishes from his expression, looking like a real stranger as he finally admits to Jinyoung what he'd been hiding all along.

"I saw you trying to kill yourself before, so I challenged myself to fix you," Jaebeom finally says in his nightmare, and it makes Jinyoung feel like a lab rat.

"There's no way to fix me," Jinyoung argues, looking around nervously as he realises they are on the bridge they met. Jinyoung is sitting on the rail, his back to the river, and with Jaebeom in front of him, almost standing between his legs.

"Ah, but wasn't I doing that just fine? Do you even think about dying when you're with me?" The older man's grin is cruel, void of every emotion that Jinyoung's gotten so used to by now.

To his embarrassment, Jinyoung realises Jaebeom is right. When they are together, he doesn't think about dying, and he feels pathetic that just a man in a few weeks could do what years of antidepressants, being in a psychiatric ward, and therapy couldn't do.

Was Jinyoung always so pitiful? Was he only crying for affection?

Haeyoung was always right. Jinyoung is an attention whore, after all.

"I wanted to prove I could do it, and I did," Jaebeom smirks, and Jinyoung feels like he's being punched in the guts, knocking all the air out of him. He's left panting on that rail.

"No, it can't be that," Jinyoung wants to cry. He feels so betrayed.

"You knew it was something awful, didn't you? I'm just confirming your fear. You wanted that," Jaebeom accuses him, his expression changing to one of disdain that hurts the younger man so deeply he doesn't know what to do or say. "And since you don't want my help anymore, I guess you can just drown."

"What?" Jinyoung mutters, but just as the word escapes his lips, Jaebeom steps forward and presses both palms against Jinyoung's chest.

The younger man wraps a hand around Jaebeom's left wrist, but it isn't enough to help him when the older man pushes him, knocking him out of the rail until Jinyoung is falling backwards into the dark pits of the Han River. He screams as he keeps falling and falling, and all he can see is Jaebeom leaning over the rail, framed by the starless night sky, the cruelest smile on his lips.