REAPER || minsung ✔︎

22

Hospital rooms were never a place someone would want to be, not voluntarily at least. The blandness of the plain walls started closing in, looking smaller with every hour passing.

They were smothering Jisung with their density, with the longing to breath in the fresh outside air once again. It felt like he had been in there for an eternity, a prisoner to his own condition.

It was bright. The light bounced off the barriers, jumping from side to side, but it didn't make it any more lively. In fact, all this luminescence revealed how lonely it was. At least he could've imagined there were people in the dark.

Jisung sighed glumly, the blue sky in his window reflecting down on the streets and coloring them in similar tints. Prussian, oxford, midnight. It was all blue, a gloomy and agonizing color if the shades were wrong.

He didn't understand; why he was still stuck inside a stuffy room, why they were still checking on his health, why he was still trying. Why would one desperately try to cling onto something inevitable, continuing to throw pennies into the slot when the game was made to be lost.

Years were continuously unconsciously counting down, becoming long and dreadful days, becoming fast-passing hours, speedingly meaningless minutes, countless seconds. Time waits for no one, death receives anyone with open arms.

Drowning in his thoughts, Jisung jumped when a cold hand tapped his shoulder. He trembled, not daring to turn his head around. That high-frequency screech muting his hearing to his surroundings, the busy city streets and the rustling of hospital staff falling silent. The goose bumps on his arms caused by the icy environment. And finally, the darkness that made him feel so welcomed. He wasn't only inside his head anymore.

"Are you really going to ignore me, Jisung?"

Taunting, but there was something unnerving about the tone. Something was up, something that could destroy everything.

Sharp nails caressed his throat, bloody lines making him light in the head.

Digging in, followed by a gasp, the demon smirked. "I know you can't block out my existence. Even in your thoughts, you find it hard."

"Get out," Jisung threatened in a low voice, gaze fixated on the digital clock hanging on the building across. 10; 17: 41:01. "Or I will scream."

The demon laughed, crouching down and resting his head on the handrail. "That'll only get you into the psychiatric ward. Also, they can't go in. This room isn't real."

"Pardon?" Jisung squinted his eyes, head too muddy to comprehend it.

"You're in my world now," the demon explained, drawing circles on the inside of his hand. "An imaginary one where you can't escape, helplessly running around in my palm."

Jisung tightly gripped the leather of the stool, the material getting damaged, tearing together with his sanity. He cracked, he couldn't hold it in any longer. "What do you want from me? If you want me gone, then why don't you kill me?"

"There, there, don't get too worked up," the demon said, patting Jisung's head. "That's what I wanted to hear."

He reached into his pocket, pulling out a blade, curved and crystallized. "Remember this?"

Jisung only nodded, eyes like saucers. He shuddered upon seeing the screaming designs, the memories of the first time he found it attacking his brain. He never wished to go back to that, even in mind.

Before, all the thoughts that made his skin crawl at night were ones of embarrassment. The dumb things his thirteen year old self did that kept him up at night. Now, however, the constant phobia of the end was what terrorized him before he could sleep. If he closed his eyes, what would become of him. There was a chance he'd never open them again. He couldn't live like that any longer.