PSYCHO | Stray Kids AU

3 : The Smile Of Pain

Short, harsh gasps of air resonated through the male bathroom. Han Jisung's mind was a complete mess of emotions and thoughts. He leaned over the white, ceramic sink, depositing his own spit that seemed to build up as the urge to vomit increased. His hands pressed into the smooth edges of the sink, fingertips turning white, his left crunching at a once pristine piece of paper.

Jisung raised his eyes, stared at his reflection in the mirror. He met his own dark brown eyes under his navy blue hair that hung uselessly in a frenzied mess over his face. Dried tear streaks ran across his ghoulishly tanned cheeks that only added to his devoid and inhumane look. In all, he resembled a dead person who has been unwillingly brought to life.

He stumbled back as the reality hit again. He muttered words that never left his mouth, stumbling back as a dark figure crashed into his view. It loomed over him as he let out a strangled cry. The figure opened its mouth, vomiting fountains of darkness that encased Jisung. They cascaded down and down and down, melting into a thick black sludge across the grey, dirty tiles of the bathroom floor.

His eyes squeezed shut, fists clenched tight, turning white and red.
But nothing came. Nothing happened.

He opened his eyes, seeing the university bathroom as it usually was. As it should be. He was alone. Yet again, it had been another figment far from the reality of others. A reality that even a wandering soul failed to see. A fragment of Han Jisung's mind. 

A bubble of laughter slipped through his parched lips. His eyes were devoid, echoing into his laugh. Tears gathered at the edge of his eyes.

The door opened and Kim Seungmin walked in.

"Are you done now?"

"You." Jisung laughed, like a foolish maniac. Perhaps, a small voice wandered from within, he was finally going insane.

"You killed my girlfriend. But she was cheating on me with you." He laughed again, only suddenly halting when the dark figure returned, crawling out the shadows, liquidating and then solidifying before his eyes. It grew itself arms. Arms that started as black stumps - wrinkled and veiny, yet entirely black - elongating further and further. Reaching closer and closer. unfolding a gnarly finger that reached out towards Jisung.

Seungmin stared at Jisung. "Why did you stop laughing?" Fear momentarily flashed across his face, but was gone as soon as it came; masked like all the other emotions he kept locked in a bottle away from his heart.

Yet all he received was a blood-curdling scream that tore through the air like a starved beast.
Then, Jisung stopped screaming - instead laughing. Seungmin couldn't see. He couldn't understand. But then again, Han Jisung had always been misunderstood. His problems had always been too much at once. If he had ever tried to explain, he hadn't ever known where to start. For where, could a person like Han Jisung, start with the large multitude of problems that stemmed from nothing and became a large entangled boulder of something. Where even Han Jisung could not separate one from another and label each as such. Where the only incoherent though he ever had about himself was that he was going insane - he was losing his mind. And so perhaps, it had always been easier for him to close in on himself. Completely. To lock himself away from any human being. 

Seungmin crouched down to the other who had collapsed to the floor, sitting vulnerably open. His back leaned against the doorframe of a cubicle; his legs spread wide, hands limp (save for the left, still clenched around the paper).

"You listening to me, Jisung?"

Jisung nodded, but his eyes seemed glazed over; lost far away.

"I need verbal confirmation."