we the cursed, nct dream ✔

part six

⇉ the one where things get more than a little disturbing.

part six

"Oh fuck."

Juno hardly notices the profane word slipping from between her lips. All she can think about is the girl currently collapsed against the wall of the passageway, blood dripping generously from at least six wounds on her abdomen. Her mouth is slightly open and her head hangs downward, making it impossible to discern her features.

The girl has been stabbed. And, after discerning that there's no smell coming from the body and that the blood is still dripping and seems quite fresh, Juno can feel her own face pale as she makes another startling realization.

This girl has been stabbed recently.

Potential awkwardness be damned, Juno immediately reaches for her phone. Her hands are trembling uncontrollably, and it takes her a few tries to open up the phone application. The first contact her eyes catch is Jeno's, and she immediately clicks on the call button without a moment's more hesitation.

"I thought you'd never call," he answers happily. "I was just about to ask you to come meet us on the North side. Can you get there, or should one of us-"

"Jeno, oh my god." Juno would be mortified about the fact that her voice is shaking even worse than her hands are, but she's hardly even present. She starts speaking, rapid and incoherent. "I just... I don't know what to do, there's this girl and-"

"Hey," he says, alarmed, immediately clued in to the fact that there's something seriously wrong from her unsteady tone. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

"I was just wandering around in the hallways and then I saw blood on the floor and so I followed it into this passage and I saw this girl laying there and I'm pretty sure she's dead but I don't see any teachers around and I think I might be hallucinating but it feels pretty real and I am so f*cking freaked out." Juno takes a deep breath when she's finished, realizing just how unhinged he sounds.

Yet, he seems to take her seriously. "A girl? And she's dead?" A pause, and then, "Where are you right now?"

Juno glances around, but she sees no special landmarks that she can use to describe her location. "Um, I'm on the third floor. There's this hallway, uh, with a big window, and then there's a passage a little past there that just leads to a dead end, I think?"

"We're on our way," he tells her immediately, and she's relieved that her directions weren't completely useless. "Wait for me, okay?"

And so she does. As much as Juno wants to turn her face away from the horrifying sight so that the bile rising in her throat doesn't eventually come all the way up, she cannot seem to tear her eyes away from the body. She slumps down against the opposite wall, heart in her throat. And then the thought comes that the person who killed her could still be lurking around, and Juno feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight.

A sigh of relief leaves her lips when she hears footsteps thumping down the hallway. "What's going on?" Jeno asks the minute he turns the corner, but then his eyes catch the bloodied body on the floor. "Holy shit."

His haunted expression is mirrored on the faces of all the boys behind him as they stare. Mark is the first one to recover. "Go get a teacher," he directs Haechan soberly, nudging the other boy's arm lightly. For once, Haechan doesn't reply or say anything in response, just takes one more look at the dead girl before striding out of the passage.

"You okay?" The boy's voice is so soft that she barely hears it. And even then, she isn't sure at first whether he's even speaking to her. But when Juno finally lifts her head, Renjun's there, a hand outstretched to help her up.