Jooheon left Wonho, going back into the living room and leaving Wonho to process for himself.
It wasn't that Wonho was against Hyungwon. He really did want the best for his friend. But he wanted to help him get better, and from what he'd seen, Hyungwon's...obsession...with the whole Kihyun conspiracy was only worsening his condition.
He wanted to help Hyungwon, he really did. Why couldn't anyone else see that?
***
"So, can you tell us why you think Kihyun is dead?" Jooheon asked as he sat back down, facing Hyungwon and trying not to let his anger at Wonho spill over to the tall boy.
Changkyun gave Hyungwon's hand a squeeze, and Hyungwon tensed before nodding. "Kihyun...he told me...he told me that they were transferring him to A-wing. But there is no A-wing."
"How do you know that?" Jooheon asked. He'd heard brief details from Wonho, but he was still fairly out of the loop.
"The cafeteria. It's missing a table. There's no A. And we've never seen anyone from A-wing. It doesn't exist."
Jooheon nodded slowly, not entirely convinced. "Okay. But how do you know that he's actually dead?"
"Because I saw it."
Jooheon froze. "I'm sorry, what? You saw Kihyun die? Why didn't you lead with that?"
Hyungwon fell silent, and Changkyun nudged his shoulder. "Tell him about your nightmares," he said in a low voice, and Jooheon raised an eyebrow as Hyungwon frowned and shook his head.
"Hey," Jooheon said, trying to make his voice sound somewhat gentler, a tone he wasn't really used to. "I'm not here to judge you, Hyungwon. But if Kihyun's really dead like you're saying, well...I don't know what we're supposed to do, but...that's serious. I just want to know how you know, okay?"
"You can tell him," Changkyun insisted, and Hyungwon exhaled, keeping his eyes on the ground.
"Every night...sometimes not every night...most nights...I...I see someone, only I don't see their face, and they're...they're choking me, trying to kill me, and I can't...I can't breathe, and I know I'm going to die, and then I wake up," Hyungwon mumbled, not looking up. His eyes traced the carpet, following every thread, afraid to look up and see the look in Jooheon's eyes that he'd seen in so many others. "And I thought...all this time, I thought it was me, I thought they were going to kill me and I was going to die, only I didn't know when or where or who it was but I knew it was going to happen, only..."
Hyungwon flinched as he remembered the first time his dream had changed, when he'd held up his hands to see that they had never been his hands at all. "Only it wasn't me, it was Kihyun, it was always Kihyun, it was him that they were killing."
The room was quiet. Then Jooheon spoke up, trying to find a question that wouldn't make Hyungwon feel as though they didn't believe him. "How did you know it was Kihyun?"
"His hand," Hyungwon whispered, turning his left palm so it stared up at him, angry, accusatory, smooth and unmarked. "He has a scar. And in my dream, I held up my hand, only it was his hand, with his scar, and that's when I knew that it was Kihyun and not me. It was Kihyun," he repeated, his voice sad and low.
"How do you know that he's already dead though?" Jooheon asked, frowning. If he were to be honest with himself, he felt somewhat disturbed, a bit shaken. When Hyungwon spoke, he spoke with a ring of inevitable truth in his voice, a truth he'd been living with for a long time. "I mean, what if it hasn't happened yet? What if it's going to happen in the future?"
And Jooheon, who had already found himself believing his thin friend, asked himself the question that confirmed his faith in Hyungwon. If Kihyun is still alive, can we save him?
"He's dead," Hyungwon said, his voice firm. "The dream changed. I didn't know...I didn't know that it was Kihyun, then. I could have...could have saved him, maybe...but he's dead now. The dream wouldn't have shown me his hand unless something changed. We can't save him anymore. That's what the hand means. It gave me the answer to a question that had become useless. All this time..." His voice grew raw, desperate. "All this time, it was him."
"How long..." Jooheon paused. He didn't like seeing Hyungwon like this, broken and in agony from holding a secret that was ripping him apart from within. "How long have you been having these dreams?"
Hyungwon looked up at last, his eyes dark with hopelessness. "The dream changed a while ago. Maybe two weeks. I don't know. Days flow together. But...I've had them for a while." He paused. "Two years, maybe. Before I even knew Kihyun."
"Two years..." Jooheon mused aloud, his eyes clouded with worry. "Is that why..."
Hyungwon nodded, averting his eyes to the right. He picked at the corner of the sofa. "That's why my mom put me in the program. The first night I had that dream, I thought it was just a nightmare. But then it happened the next night, and the next night...So after a week or two, I told her about it. She said it was nothing. But the dreams kept happening, and I brought them up again, and she...she got mad at me for bringing it up, said I was trying to humiliate her. But they just kept happening, and I didn't know who else to turn to except my family, and when she heard me talking to my brother about it, she said I was trying to corrupt him too, and eventually she got sick of it, sick of me, so...so she dropped me off."
"But..." Jooheon blinked as he realized something.
They'd all joined the program because they'd had mental issues.
But Hyungwon...
If he was right about Kihyun...
Then Hyungwon had never been crazy at all.
