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A peal of laughter. A high-pitched scream.
The sounds keep replaying, a broken record left untended, chiming the same haunting tune like clockwork when dawn pulls around.
He’s been laying here for hours, and still hasn’t escaped.
This happens every time, he thinks, kicking away his soiled duvet and pushing himself into sitting with weak arms. The mattress beneath him barely gives with his weight—is the mattress too tough, or is it that he’s lost weight? Either way, he knows where his exhausted body is taking him, even though he’s tried and failed to stay in his own room for a fortnight now.
A fortnight. Two weeks. Has it really been that long? Time slips between his fingers like wet sand, runny but sticky, a mess in the moment and fallen into an endless abyss of likeness the next.
Four steps to the door. He doesn’t need the light of day to find his way around the house, having ghosted through it for the past four years, every day. Like clockwork. Everything works in circles, once there, gone the next, then back again; time running in circles, memories playing ring-a-roses, deja vu at every dismal twist.
In the faint glow of twilight, the dust coating the floor of the corridor outside his door is too visible. He prefers the darkness, where the shadows of what he’s lost aren’t so present, but he’s never been able to step out of his room at times other than the blue hour. His door does nothing to push back the growing grey snow, simply gliding over its layers and stirring a small cloud of loss. He squints at the ground, looking half-heartedly for the imprints of his own feet, then stepping in them. There’s only one track through this corridor, and it feels right, not adding to it when there haven’t been other pairs of shoes to brush through the desert of his own creation for so long.
The door he makes his careful way to looms horribly familiar in front of him, faint traces of blu-tac visible on the wood where posters once were hung. He’d taken them down, folded them carefully, and tucked them into drawers while wearing gloves so as not to disturb the fingerprints he knows won’t ever leave. And there, once he steps inside the room, is the drawer—ever-present, unchanged besides the dust gathering on its surface, like it is on every once-clean spot in the apartment.
With a faint sniff, he lowers himself onto this bed. It’s softer than his; covers worn with love and use; mattress lively, still waiting for its owner. He’s not its owner. He never will be.
He lays down anyways. Alarm bells ring in his head, the sleep-timer in his head finally going off.
It’s time.
Every night for a fortnight, he’s found dreamless sleep in the bed of his former roommate. Every time, it leaves him slightly more alive than how he’d been during the day. However, this time… they find him.
Beomgyu dreams.
“Hey, Beomgyu!” Yeonjun yells in his ear, loud as ever. He waves a hand in front of Beomgyu’s eyes, causing the latter to flinch, blinking rapidly.
Beside him, Huening Kai giggles. “You’re always so lost, Gyu. Where do you go?”
Beomgyu opens his mouth to reply with the sly remark always on the tip of his tongue, but Soobin beats him. “He’s got DID, Kai. It’s his serial killer personality coming out.” the man quips dryly.
Taehyun barks out a laugh. “Yeah, I remember last year when he got caught stabbing a guy on main street. Only got away ‘cuz he switched up again and they couldn’t find any flaws in his alibi.”
Kai looks dumbstruck with the revelation. Beomgyu stares him dead in the eyes, expressionless, then bares his teeth. Kai screams.
It feels so… normal. Is being with his four best friends not meant to feel normal?
What’s off?
Yeonjun flicks his forehead before turning to Kai and ruffling the youngest’s head. “They’re messing with you, Hueningie. Beomgyu’s just locked out.”
“I’m not locked out!” Beomgyu huffs. “I’m just thinking.”
“About?”
“About why the hell you get to dress emo and you get called ‘hot’, but when I do it, I get called a roadman.”
“Oi,” And Beomgyu’s being tackled, a hand shoving his stomach and the other holding the back of his head so when he falls, he’s cushioned from imminent concussion. He squeals, fumbling to get away, but Yeonjun is stronger and lands an easy flick on Beomgyu’s forehead. He exaggerates a groan, clutching his head and kicking his legs like a child when the pain really was momentary.
Petals float above him, disturbed by their tussle. Pink, lilac and vibrant orange; sunrise held in a torrent of flower discharge, clouding his eyes. When they finally clear, his head is encased by the green of overgrown, freshly-watered grass, scents of rain and perfume mingling. A new obstruction enters his view, and Yeonjun grins in victory, haloed by growing sunlight.
“What time is it?” Beomgyu asks him, voice oddly breathless.
Their gazes break apart, and Beomgyu mourns the loss he’s caused himself. “fifteen past five.”
Baffled, Beomgyu says, “AM?”
“Yes, idiot,” Soobin replies offhandedly, entering Beomgyu’s vision. “You wanted to see the sunrise.”
The memory comes back to him in the tick of a clock hand, time ticking from fifteen to sixteen past. He’d set a blaring alarm, woken all four of his roommates for this.
“Well,” he starts, brushing off his legs as Kai jogs over to grab his other hand and help him up. “Why don’t we go get something, since we still have…” he peers at Yeonjun’s watch again, and the other giggles at seemingly nothing. “Forty minutes?”
Excited assent immediately washes over him from all except Soobin, who simply presses his lips together and nods. As the five of them make their slow way back onto the park’s gravel path, Beomgyu sidles beside Soobin.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks genuinely.
Soobin raises both eyebrows, and they disappear behind his blue-dyed hair. “Of course. You disturbed my beauty sleep. How will I wake up a prince now?”
Beomgyu slaps his arm. “You already are one, idiot.”
To his surprise, Soobin grins stupidly. “Of course I am.”
At twenty-four past five, they reach the ‘Open 24-Hours A Day, 7 Days A Week’ store nestled just beside the pop-up theme park within the normal, grassy park. The cheap yellow glow brings Beomgyu’s companions’ faces to life, lighting up the various colours of their dyed hairs. He can’t take his eyes off Yeonjun’s pink mullet.
They buy slushies from the disgruntled shopkeeper. Kai selects a pack of dinosaur gummies too, insisting that “sunrise isn’t real without a snack”. Then, they hunt for a good spot to watch the sky.
The lake draws Beomgyu’s attention. He taps Yeonjun’s shoulder, pointing, and Yeonjun calls the others over. On a slightly raised hill beside the glistening water, the five boys set down their blankets, facing where faint streaks of orange are starting to break through the monotonous blue. There isn’t a cloud in sight. Beomgyu is nestled beside Yeonjun, hugging his knees, and he sneaks a glance at Yeonjun’s watch, glowing where Yeonjun leans back on his arms, staring upwards. It’s five forty-seven.
The other three sit together about a metre away, huddled in a circle around, Beomgyu assumes, Taehyun’s camera, which he’s been using to snap photos since last week. Beomgyu bought it for him for his birthday, and he hasn’t put it down since.
Yeonjun notices the three of them after a couple of minutes of staring into oblivion. However, to Beomgyu’s surprise, he turns fully to Beomgyu, laying on his side with his head propped up in his right hand. Beomgyu mirrors his position.
“This is going to be worth it, isn’t it?” Beomgyu says. “The sky’s already pretty.”
Yeonjun hums. He hasn’t looked away from Beomgyu’s face.
There’s a rose bush behind Yeonjun’s head, though it has no thorns. Probably picked off by some cheeky kids. The red of their petals sets a glow on Yeonjun’s face that Beomgyu can’t hope to describe without paints.
Yeonjun tilts his head, redrawing Beomgyu’s attention. “Can I tell you something?” he whispers softly, something in his eyes that Beomgyu can’t interpret.
Why is he asking? “Obviously,” Beomgyu answers.
Yeonjun’s hand shifts from the grass between them to Beomgyu’s cheek. “What if I showed you?”
Beomgyu’s face heats. He doesn’t know where this is going.
Does he care?
“Go ahead,” he’s whispering now too. It feels like a confession, it feels like fate, another tick of a clock’s longest hand.
Five fifty-three. The brush of lips, glow of a budding day, the rise of another era. Every hopeless number moves forwards, a refusal to stay in the beauty of the present, colours blurring into a hopeless palette of the dismal future. A new horizon comes into view.
What happened to us? The darkening sky asks, rain pouring from grey clouds of every shade. Beomgyu looks down at his wrist, wrapped in Yeonjun’s watch.
Five fifty-three in the evening. Alone.
Where is Yeonjun? He was meant to pick Beomyu up five minutes ago. Beomgyu pulls out his phone, flicking to the contact with a red heart emoji beside it, the only evidence of their closeness besides their sharing of Yeonjun’s room in the dorm. None of the other three bat an eye at the two. “It was inevitable,” Taehyun had said once.
Yeonjun doesn’t pick up. Neither does Taehyun,
Nor Soobin,
Nor Kai.
What happened to us? Where are they?
Yeonjun’s watch ticks. It’s five fifty-four, and no one is picking up.
The call from an unknown number comes ten minutes later. It’s the police, asking him to head over.
Beomgyu wakes up in a sweat. Alone.