The Car Crash Club • Monsta X

viii.

Hyungwon took a wandering path home, going up streets he usually didn't and eventually winding up at his front door. It was later than he'd registered; at some point, the sun had gone down, and the world was living in that murky twilight before night set in. He'd left his therapist's office around four when the sun was still high in the sky, but more time must have passed than he'd realized.

He opened the door, shutting it behind him, and turned to look at the dark interior of the house. The switch was just beside the door frame, but he didn't flick it. Instead, he moved forward through the darkness, his body instinctively knowing where each corner lay as he navigated through the kitchen and living room, making his way towards the bedrooms. He stopped in the doorway of his own, a hand on the frame as though stopping himself from entering. The bed was still unmade, the laundry piling up in the bin in the corner. And there on the wall, the only sign of life, Mi-Yeon's nightlight.

Hyungwon decided on a whim that he didn't want to sleep in his room that night. He only ventured inside to grab the nightlight, unplugging it from the wall, and he brought it with him into the living room, which was still dark. He plugged the nightlight into the wall socket, and a small, intimate glow distinguished the surrounding shadows. Instead of feeling lifeless, the room now felt almost cozy. He grabbed all the blankets from the room and tossed them on the couch.

He liked blankets, not necessarily so much for warmth, but for weight. He liked the feeling of being weighed down. He couldn't really describe why. When he slept with only one blanket, he felt restless and couldn't sleep. With the added weight of more blankets, he felt more at ease, like someone was holding him, even though he hated sharing a bed with others. When he and Mi-Yeon were little, they'd shared a bed for a bit, and he'd often had a hard time falling asleep because the sound of someone else's even, sleeping breaths creeped him out. That, and he couldn't sleep without total darkness, so Mi-Yeon's nightlight had kept him up.

Once he'd gathered them all on the couch, he headed back upstairs to go to the bathroom. He paused at the medicine cabinet, staring at the multiple prescription bottles for a CHAE HYUNGWON that lined the shelf. Some analgesics to take as needed, some anti-depressants that he was supposed to take every night. A few other miscellaneous pills that were, in short, supposed to make him a happy and functional member of society once more. He grabbed a bottle of soporific pills, meant to induce sleep, and shook two out into his hand, putting the bottle back on the shelf and using water from the sink to swallow them. He winced as the bitter aftertaste of Alprazolam tinged his mouth, and he swallowed a little more water to get rid of it.

Hyungwon stared at the other pills a moment longer before shutting the medicine cabinet, avoiding his reflection in the mirror. He brushed his teeth and returned to the couch, crawling under the five or six blankets he'd collected, and he stared at the nightlight for a few moments before tucking his head down and letting the world disappear for a while

--

The days passed by in a dark blur, and it was Thursday again before he realized any time had passed at all. He couldn't remember if he'd been eating or what he'd done since last Thursday. He didn't remember ever leaving the house. But he couldn't clearly remember going into the kitchen, either. He knew he must have at some point, but he felt too disoriented to specifically recall when or for what. He only knew it was Thursday because he'd decided, for a reason he could no longer remember, to turn his phone on. And he only knew a week had passed because the date had flashed on his home screen. He'd had to check his call history to make sure that the voicemail from his therapist had indeed been from last week, which it had.

As usual, he ignored the series of missed calls and messages.

This had happened before, this lapse of time that he couldn't place. It usually happened when he forgot to take some of his pills (or chose not to) or when he took too many at once. Sometimes, a few hours would pass, and when he'd eventually come to, he'd realize that he didn't know what had occurred during the four hours that the clock had registered. Sometimes, a few days. But never this long before.

If he hadn't felt so numb, he might have felt worried. As it was, he didn't feel anything.

In his confused state, it took him a full five minutes to register what he'd thought was a meaningless background noise as persistent knocking. He tensed, drawing the nest of blankets closer before realizing that the noise wasn't going to go away on its own, and that the sooner he got up and made it stop, the sooner he could return to a paralytic sleep.

He got up stiffly, his limbs heavy and cumbersome beneath him as he made his way to the door. He paused, wishing belatedly for a hood to cover his face, but he didn't feel like going all the way back to his room, not when the knocking was so loud and abrasive this close. He opened the door a sliver, standing far enough back that his face was cloaked in shadows from the house that hadn't seen a light switch flicked on in over a week.

A fist slid against the door as though having been caught mid-knock. "Oh, hey, Hyungwon, is that you?" someone asked from the other side of the door, and the tone struck Hyungwon as familiar, though he couldn't place it right away.

"Why," Hyungwon asked, his voice low and rough from disuse.

"It's me, Jooheon. From school. Our teacher wanted someone to check in on you since you haven't showed up to class for a week and I sort of volunteered...Can I come in?"

"No. Please stop knocking," Hyungwon said before shutting the door.

here's that update that's been backlogged for several months;;; sorry but how are y'all doing with the world in a state of crisis and all?