Hala Hala ||| Ateez

7

Wooyoung woke up suddenly and sat up. He felt oddly refreshed but confused as he looked around.

He was back in his jail cell, on his bed, and away from San.

Hongjoong must have used the sleeping serum on him as he was running for San... Wooyoung knew he shouldn't have done that, but part of him couldn't help it. Those words...

Whore.

Whore.

"No! I'm not!" Wooyoung shouted, punching his pillow as hard as he could. A few tears rolled down his cheek as he tried to get the thought out of his head. "I-I'm n-n-not..."

The door to his cell opened and Wooyoung turned to see both Yunho and Hongjoong walked in. They didn't look happy.

Hongjoong slammed the door behind him and glared down at Wooyoung. "What happened in there?"

Wooyoung found himself shrinking back under his harsh gaze and looked down at the floor. He hated that it was an instinct to look down whenever he felt intimidated.

"We are going to ask you one more time. I know we are all learning to work together, but I wasn't expecting an incident on the first day."

"Just tell us what happened so we can prevent it from happening again." Yunho said, coming to sit next to the younger on the bed.

Wooyoung brought his knees to his chest and stared at them. "It's like he was two different people. I... I don't know how to explain it. But he started..." Wooyoung swallowed the lump in his throat. "I don't think he's stable enough to have on the team. It sounded like he was looking for... For my weakness."

He saw the two cops exchange a glance out of the corner of his eye, but ignored it. Instead he focused on trying to stay out of the dark place he went to.

Whore.

He shook his head. No, he wasn't one... He wasn't...

"Wooyoung?" Yunho said softly. He reached out and placed a hand on Wooyoung's knee.

The younger would have flinched away if he wasn't already pressed against the wall. But at the same time... It felt nice. He could feel the concern radiating off Yunho.

"He called me a whore."

"You said it was like he was a different person?" Yunho asked, squeezing Wooyoung's knee gently.

"Yes. He seemed to be there, and then it was like he was someone different. And he kept saying 'we'. I'm sorry that I snapped. I promise I didn't mean to." Wooyoung finally forced himself to glance up and look at Hongjoong. He could hear his voice shaking. "Please don't leave me behind..." He whispered, bowing his head again.

"Wooyoung, we never said anything about leaving you behind. We just wanted to see what happened so we can get things straightened out." Hongjoong said, his voice softening along with his gaze as he crouched in front of Wooyoung.

Yunho moved a little closer. "We didn't expect things to go perfectly right of the bat. That would be ridiculous. Are you ok?"

Wooyoung snorted and looked down at the ground again. He was never going to be ok... Never...

"Yeah, I'm fine." He glanced up at the two in front of him.

"Ok. Get some rest, we will try another round of training tomorrow." Hongjoong said as both he and Yunho stood to leave.

Wooyoung nodded and closed his eyes as Yunho's hand left his knee and he suddenly felt better, yet so empty at the same time.

The tears came as soon as the lock clicked.