The Car Crash Club • Monsta X

xl.

Despite the constantly growing dread that leaves him without appetite for days on end, Hyungwon can't help but come to love Mi-Yeon. He knows Father adopted her to further mock their sad imitation of a family, but Hyungwon truly sees her as a sister.

She's pure in a way that pains Hyungwon immensely, and when he looks at her, he sees himself, young and fascinated by shiny things and gifts and attention. He's scared for Mi-Yeon, more scared than he is for himself, and that's when he knows that Operation Disappear isn't going to happen. That in six months, when he turns eighteen, he isn't going to be getting on a bus or a train. He'll be in his bedroom, awaiting whatever horrendous birthday present Father has prepared for him, because how can he leave behind something so innocent with the knowledge that it won't remain that way, that it will be completely and wholly corrupted?

Hyungwon falls into a deep depression. He skips school for two weeks. Father doesn't mind because it means Hyungwon is home more often and that he can't see Jooheon either. Hyungwon feels numb; Operation Disappear had been the only hope he'd had driving him forward. With his plan to leave gone, Hyungwon has to endure each day with the knowledge that there is no end in sight.

But there's Mi-Yeon. Father and Mother renovated what used to be a storage room into a small bedroom for her. Mi-Yeon loves the ocean, apparently, and she has bedsheets with mermaids on them and a goldfish night light. Hyungwon knows this is Father's doing, and it scares him that even these small things can be tainted with evil intent, but he can't say anything to Mi-Yeon. She brings Hyungwon into her room, and she throws tea parties for a stuffed whale named Bluebell and a mermaid doll named Anna. Hyungwon is entirely out of his element. He doesn't know how to interact with Mi-Yeon at first; he's afraid if he gets too close to her, he'll ruin her too. That his defilement might overpower her innocence.

But Mi-Yeon doesn't seem to realize the full obscenity of his existence. She simply invites him to the tea party and only asks that he also pour for Bluebell and Anna as well.

And something in him just breaks. They're in Mi-Yeon's room in the middle of another tea party when he starts sobbing, and Mi-Yeon scoots closer and collects his tears on her tiny fingers and presses small kisses all over his face. Hyungwon has never felt the sort of love Mi-Yeon is bestowing upon him, one of giving and not taking, one without conditions or attached strings. She is pure and she is innocent and he weeps for what he has lost and what she will also come to lose.

Later that night, Father visits him, and Hyungwon asks to make a deal. He'll stay and be obedient – whatever Father wants, whenever Father asks – if he'll just leave Mi-Yeon alone. If he won't break her like he broke Hyungwon.

And Father looks at him for a long moment before testing Hyungwon, requesting of Hyungwon something vulgar and ugly that Father knows Hyungwon despises, something that Father uses to remind Hyungwon just how thoroughly Father is in control and to what extent he dominates Hyungwon.

And Hyungwon submits because he doesn't know what else to do.

--updated 08/11/20, part 2/3--