The Car Crash Club • Monsta X

xii.

"So you went to their club meeting? Hyungwon, I'm really proud of you," his therapist said, and it was impossible to ignore her glowing cheeks so Hyungwon refocused his attention on the ball of yarn, rolling it between his hands. "That must have been very difficult to do. Did you find it to be a rewarding experience?"

During their sessions, they just talked. She had a notepad on the desk, but she'd noticed how Hyungwon had gotten anxious in the first few sessions when she'd been taking notes, so she'd stopped doing so and presumably just wrote down whatever she remembered after. Hyungwon appreciated that. She was always doing little things to show him that she truly had his comfort and best interests in mind.

"I don't know," Hyungwon responded to buy himself time while he thought out a more detailed response. "They're...strange. I don't understand them yet."

"Do you think you'll go back?"

Hyungwon looped his thumb under one of the strands, wrapping it around several times. "I don't know. I don't even know why I went in the first place."

She paused, and Hyungwon could sense her sort of drawing in her energy to ask a more meaningful question. "Hyungwon, why did you decide to go today? Last time we talked, it sounded like you were against the idea of even contacting that one boy."

Hyungwon huffed out a frustrated sigh as he freed his thumb from the yarn, instead compressing the ball between his hands. "I don't know. He keeps saying things, assuming I'll be there. Like, he'll ask if I'm going to call him, and then I say of course not, and he just says, 'Great, looking forward to it.' Like that. And I keep telling him no and that I won't, but then I still showed up today. I don't understand my own actions. I feel very confused," he admitted in a rare burst of pure honesty. He was just so lost and disoriented at the moment.

"Maybe, deep in your subconscious, you truly need other people, even if you try to convince yourself that you don't," she responded softly, her tone very gentle because she knew how he responded to statements that troubled him by getting even more upset.

Sure enough, he immediately looked down, squeezing the ball of yarn so hard that several strands spilled out in the gaps between his fingers. "If I needed other people, then my whole family wouldn't have died," he said, his voice tense and the muscles in his neck protruding forcefully. His whole body had become stiff, every muscle clenched in place. He looked back up at her, and she couldn't help but flinch at the commingling hatred and despair in his eyes. "Or is this some sort of God thing? Did he do this on purpose or even just let it happen for some reason, just to teach me something? What lesson? And why am I-" He choked slightly on the next words. "-so accursed to be worthy?"

"I'm sorry, Hyungwon," she said, squeezing her hands in her lap because it was hard for her to watch any of her clients struggling so viscerally with something. "That's not something I can answer for you." She paused, debating what to ask because they'd never brought up the God question before. "Do you...do you believe in God?"

"I thought I did," Hyungwon answered back, his voice broken as he stared down at the ball of yarn in his hands. Despite compressing the yarn, it had resumed its natural state as though he'd never interfered with it at all. "Before." He was drawing back into himself, or trying to. He felt like he'd said too much, let too much show, and now he just felt naked in the small space, like she'd be able to see through every pore.

"And now?"

Hyungwon stared down blankly, the question bouncing through his mind and struggling to find purchase. He wanted to stay silent, but he also needed to answer the question. Not just for her, but for himself. To help himself realize what his subconscious had already realized. "And now...I'm stuck between two realities, one in which an omniscient, omnipotent God does not and has not ever existed...and another in which He exists and chooses to let his people suffer meaninglessly, and I'm honestly not sure which reality is worse to me." He paused, combing his fingers over the strands of yarn once more, letting their soft fibers relax his fingertips as other troubling thoughts surfaced. "Or maybe He's there, and the fault is with me. Maybe I didn't pray with enough dedication or believe with enough fervor or...I don't know. Maybe it's been me this whole time. Maybe-"

"It wasn't your fault," she interrupted, knowing from past sessions where Hyungwon's thoughts would take him. She hated interrupting clients, but she needed him to know that she fully supported him before he could introduce any doubt. "The accident wasn't and isn't your fault, Hyungwon. It was exactly that - an accident. You didn't know what would happen, and you couldn't have prevented it."

"But God could have," Hyungwon said, looking up at her with doubting eyes. "If He exists. He could have, and he didn't."

She pursed her lips, trying to be careful about how she asked the question because it wasn't her job to influence someone's beliefs in any particular direction. "If God exists, then why do you think he didn't intervene? Why do you think God lets suffering happen in the world?"

Hyungwon shook his head, his eyes straying to the wall to his left as he tried to come up with an answer. "I don't...I don't know. Before all this...I would have said..." He looked back at her. "I would have said that God lets people suffer so they learn endurance. That his decisions work toward a larger purpose that we can't possibly know, a big picture that we have no way of seeing from our limited perspective. But that's bullshit because I'm not learning to endure, I'm breaking apart, and for what? I haven't achieved any Godly purpose. I have learned nothing that I couldn't have learned with my family still alive." He exhaled heavily, almost panting with the exertion of having spoken so much about something he was so clearly in conflict with.

"I see," she said, shifting and crossing her legs as she noted his clear discomfort with the topic. "Let's talk about something else, all right?"

He gave a low nod, his hair falling into his dark eyes.

"How are you healing up?" she asked, hoping that this would be an easier question that would hopefully put him more at ease. "You've been out of the hospital for several months now. How has your recovery been going?"

"It's been fine," he said dully. Physical things were of no interest to him when the metaphysical pain far outweighed all else.

"You've mentioned scars before," she said slowly. The subject had come up in several of their past sessions, but they hadn't had the opportunity to discuss them in any depth. "How do you feel about those?"

Hyungwon felt heat rush to his face in an instant response, and he tried to keep his head low so she couldn't see much of his face. "They're a reminder that never seems to go away."

"A reminder of what, Hyungwon?"

"Of my family. Of how I couldn't save any of them." A memory flashed in front of his eyes. He was caught on the door, the twisted piece of metal cutting into his arm, his clothing soaked with blood, and to his right, there was Mi-Yeon, bent irregularly, bone where there shouldn't be bone. Screaming, was it him or Mi-Yeon or-

And then, abruptly, he was back in the therapist's office, only he was standing up, the ball of yarn dropped by his feet, his chest moving up and down rapidly as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Hyungwon? Hyungwon, are you all right? You-"

"I need to go," he said, his voice breathy and unsteady as he grabbed his mask from the couch, slipping it on over his mouth even though he couldn't breath well and pulling his hood over his face.

"Hyungwon, wait, I think you're having a panic attack and we should-"

Hyungwon ignored her, throwing the door open and walking, then running down the hallway. He needed air. He needed to get out of that room, to replace the memory with anything else at all.

Even as he ran home, he felt the tears coming at his eyes, the image of Mi-Yeon's crumpled body appearing in his mind once more.