Here I Lie // ATEEZ ✔

- 7 -

Your worst nightmare is about to come alive - but do you even know what your worst nightmare is?

He keeps falling in and out of sleep, the line between the reality and a dream getting blurry as he knocks his head against the wall, his body tensing as he takes more than a few minutes to get his brain in tune. Somewhere in the distance he hears the sound of sirens and his tired body starts to get lifted up by hopes of getting rescue, but then he laughs at himself when he realizes that it's only his imagination making up the sounds, the sirens gradually becoming fainter and fainter. His sense of time is practically nonexistent, the weather outside failing to tell him what time of the day it is supposed to be. Sometimes he wakes up to a sunny sky, sometimes the rain pelts on the window, and sometimes the darkness surrounds him, soundless. The weather is as crazy as him, changing skies so fast that it works like the hands of a magician. It could have been a day since Seonghwa's body was found, or it could even already be Monday. Shouldn't someone be sent out to find them because they hadn't showed up to work or returned home if that was the case?

After the meeting with San, no one came to visit him when he was awake. Any of them might have came in when he was asleep, because the lights that he left on as he hurriedly ran out of the room was switched off when the sun was shining from outside. The mess that he made with his limited reach was cleaned up. He wakes up to the ominous message every time, the knowledge of him knowing it's there making him unintentionally turn towards it. He tries to avoid it but as he becomes desensitized because that is all that he comes to see, he analyzes the words as if he were a detective looking around for the clues to his case. He reads the sentences over and over again, as if he could decode and read between the lines. Is it supposed to be direct or is there a hidden message somewhere? He is overthinking again, but that is the most he can do as he is left alone with his thoughts, slowly becoming crazy and sore due to his current position. Is this what they're trying to do, watching him as he slowly becomes crazy?

He hears his stomach grumbling for the umpteenth time but he ignores it, because food is the least of his worries. He folds his legs, then unfolds them until he gets bored, trying to find something else he can do to pass time. He gets dull headaches that emanate from the pain on his neck, both from the blow and the weird angle he rests his head at when he sleeps. He throws his head back, hitting it softly against the wall in a rhythmic manner.

"Who or what were you scared of, Park Seonghwa? Was it only the alcohol talking or were you genuinely scared of someone... or something?" he mutters to himself, remembering the night Seonghwa held onto his hand as he was about to leave. Did he know something we don't? Was that why he was attacked first? He screams in frustration, his voice coming out in pitiful croaks. There are a lot of things he wishes he did and did not, but the only choice he has now is to forget about them. He has slept too much that even now, sleep is not something lucrative to him. The stultifying view of the room makes him wish he can close his eyes to find something else to rest them upon, but as he stares at the back of his eyelids, the horrifying image of the murder scene replays against the black canvas. He forces himself to stay awake to rid of the nightmare, but it is all the same as he looks around the room.

Maybe death is an even better choice.

The door is unbolted from outside hastily, and he expects to see the same silver-haired creep that had served him food, but he lifts up his chin to exchange stares with the other who still bears a smile as if his face was tattooed with it. Only now the curl of his lips is cold and wicked, not radiating the same warmness he had given when he first greeted them. The captive's eyes travel to the captor's hands and he scoffs in disbelief at what he's seeing. One of his hands are holding a plastic bag, and the other, a baseball bat. Yeosang refuses to let himself think on what Wooyoung plans to do with both of the objects, but his mouth is itching to spit poison onto the latter's face, inching him forward so that he will get it over and done with.