These Scars

Chapter 1

N had been acting strange for a while now. To people on the outside he looked fine, the same happy and clingy leader that they had come to love, but the members saw something different. He was hiding something behind his ever-present smile. They could see the light drained from his eyes.

The members constantly asked if he was okay and they would get the common response. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired you guys."

Slowly more obvious things began to change about him as well. He would go to sleep earlier and wake up later. "I'm just tired." He would brush it off whenever one of them would ask him, again, what was the matter.

He began to skip meals. He had excuses for this too. "I'm not hungry." or "My stomach hurts, I can't eat anything right now." He lost weight. He got pale. Obviously, something was wrong, but what could they do. There were no extremely obvious signs and they couldn't push him to do anything, so they let it go.

That was the wrong thing to do.

One night, when everyone had passed out due to an extremely tough dance practice, everything for the group changed.

Leo woke up around 2 in the morning. After lying in bed for a while staring at the ceiling he realized he couldn't go back to sleep and decided to get up for a bit. He silently got up and left the room, heading down the hallway to the living room.

As he passed the bathroom he saw that the light was on. "Is someone else up or did one of the kids leave the light on again?" he thought to himself before knocking on the door lightly. When no one responded he slowly opened the door to peek in.

The first thing he saw was N sitting on the floor in the shower, looking up at him. Leo's first reaction was confusion. Why is he just sitting there? Then he saw the blood.

Leo's stomach dropped and he flung the door open, making a loud bang when it hit the wall. He rushed over to kneel beside N, who's normally tan skin was completely white. N's head lolled around watching Leo in his process of moving over to N's side.

Leo knew he needed to act quickly. He looked all over N's body trying to find the source of the bleeding. He didn't know exactly what had happened to make him like this until he saw the deep red cuts running down N's wrist. Leo froze.

"Leo..." N spoke weekly looking at his lifelong friend. "Please save me..."

That snapped Leo back to reality as he looked into his friend's pleading eyes. "D-don't worry Hakyeon. I-it's going to be o-okay. E-everything will be o-okay." Leo stammered while looking around to find something to help stop the bleeding.

Leo grabbed a small towel off the rack and tied it tightly around N's wrist. He flung his best friend's arm around his shoulder and did his best to lift him and get him out.

As they were walking, stumbling, down the hallway making a dash for the exit, they ran straight into Ken. He still had sleep in his eyes and yawned before greeting his hyungs. "Leo? N? What's going on? Why are you being so loud?" He asked.

Ken blinked the sleep out of his eyes and saw the scared look on Leo's face first. "Huh? What's who-" He cut himself off as he finally saw the pale, unmoving N on Leo's shoulder. He looked down then and stared at the bloody towel around N's wrist.

"Ken, call 911 and tell them I am bringing him into the hospital and to be ready." Leo said as he dashed past Ken who was still staring ahead of him in shock. Leo made it to the door before realizing Ken probably did not hear a word he just said. "Jaehwan! You need to get it together. Call 911... and clean the bathroom. I don't want to kids to see that." And with that Leo sprinted out of the dorm.

He ran with N to the nearest busy road and quickly hailed a cab. "The hospital!" Leo yells. "Just take us to the hospital as fast as you can!"

He sat back next to N who was still staring at him with his blank eyes.

"I'm sorry" N whispered to Leo, "I'm sorry."

"Shhhh, it's okay. Don't talk, just stay with me." Leo held onto N like his life depended on it.

N just kept mumbling the same phrase over and over again, not listening to Leo at all. That phrase began to break down the wall of shock that had kept Leo's tears in this whole time, and for the first time that night he cried. He nestled his head into N's hair and he cried.