The Car Crash Club • Monsta X

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Hyungwon is ready to die. He thought he knew what it was like to live a Hellish existence before, but he's certain that this is worse. This isn't even life anymore. He is already dead, just waiting for his body to join the corpse of his soul. Before, he was suffering from the abuse, but he had Jooheon. And for a while, he had Mi-Yeon. Even when his world was entirely dark and hopeless, he still had those two stars.

But he no longer has either one of them. And without any stars to break up the night sky, all he sees is darkness.

Every load of laundry Hyungwon does includes a little ammonia.

School is over now, which means Hyungwon is home all the time. He isn't permitted to have a job, and Hyungwon knows that this is just another layer of manipulation, that Father needs Hyungwon to rely on him wholly and completely.

He misses Mi-Yeon. After the accident – that is how he has compartmentalized the events that transpired that horrible night – he put the drawing she'd colored for him in her room because he couldn't bear to look at it each day. But he moved her night light into his room because he needed something to break up the dark.

Hyungwon asks himself why he can't pull off Operation Disappear now. Mi-Yeon is gone; there's no one left for him here. What's stopping him from getting on a bus or a train and never looking back?

He squeezes his eyes shut at the thought.

After Mi-Yeon died, he didn't know where Father and Mother took her body. He had known that they couldn't take her anywhere that would result in the authorities or adoption agency being alerted. But if they didn't report her dead, then the adoption agency would check in at some point in the future to find her missing, which would raise questions.

The answer came a few days later in the news.

Tragic Loss: Little Girl Playing by Train Tracks

And Hyungwon knew. Knew that the girl was Mi-Yeon, that Mother and Father had probably dumped her body on the tracks and solved all their problems.

A tragic accident, most called it.

Hyungwon knows better, but he can't tell anyone the truth.

He thinks of running away, but he's scared, scared that they'll just find another replacement. But more than that, he realizes that there's no point anymore. Running away from something also means that you're running towards something else. But Hyungwon has nothing to aim for. Everything his peers want at this point in their lives – college, work, love – seems mythical and irrational to him. He can't understand normalcy because he has no frame of reference. He doesn't want anything for himself besides an end to what he has known.

And Hyungwon thinks that he'll write the ending to his own story, but then it happens.

A miracle, his first one.

--

Father falls ill. Not horribly so; he complains of a headache and what feels like a cold. By the third day, however, he is bedridden. Mother tends to him while Hyungwon prays each day that Father will die.

But God doesn't give him his wish, not directly. Father isn't improving, but he isn't getting worse either.

But then Mother, who cares about Father in a way that Hyungwon will never understand, tells Hyungwon that they're taking Father to the hospital. She gets Father in the car and sits in the back with him. She doesn't look up as Hyungwon slowly slips into the driver's seat, his hands sliding over the wheel. He turns the key in the ignition, and the motor catches. He starts driving.

She's humming something, and Hyungwon knows it is a melody for Father and not for him because he doesn't think Mother has ever loved him.

Hyungwon is driving without really processing; the hospital is a ways away, and they have to take a country road to get there. There's no other traffic in sight. And Hyungwon knows that they will arrive at the hospital and Father will be cured, and then they'll all go back home and everything will continue as usual. A happy ending from the outside.