This Time, We'll Make It (Cheong San X Su Hyeok)

Chapter 13: Vengeful Choices

Author's Note: Warning: The flashback is a suicide attempt and if you want to skip the flashback to head straight to where we left off, then you can. As a person who has contemplated the unthinkable, I wanted to try to capture Cheong San's feelings and his trauma as realistically to the character as possible, so please bear with me. Also, I do think it makes sense for the attempt to happen here because it happens after the kidnapping and confrontation and before Cheong San's birthday. On another note! Welcome to another chapter and this one is slightly shorter than others, but it's still a lot. This chapter is themed around choices, the word choices, people make a lot of choices in this chapter, those choices can mean a lot of things. People make choices for different reasons and some choices have the same end result despite having different means.

Cheong San never thought he would ever be in this position. He didn't know what was wrong with him. It hasn't been long since he's escaped from Byeong Chan's clutches and that whole kidnapping mess. Cheong San had never felt more exhausted and wracked with pain in his life. Whatever Byeong Chan did to him, it's like Cheong San could barely think straight nor move straight. He had been in physical and mental therapy ever since the incident since Cheong San insisted that Byeong Chan only put him through electrocution torture. Everyone knew he was lying, but they couldn't get him to open up about it no matter how hard they tried. Even when Cheong San had threatened and confronted Byeong Chan that day, he kept his mouth shut and he shut himself away. So now, Cheong San was here, walking onto the roof of the school building, slowly make his way to the edge.

"What.... what am I doing?" Cheong San murmured as his legs kept him moving to the edge, his mind feeling dazed and out of his control. Every breath he took, every time he closed his eyes, Cheong San prayed that he would somehow snap out of it.

He couldn't.

Going through that entire ordeal had taught him one very important and devastating thing: his friends were still suffering in his original timeline. There was an "after," there was still more after Cheong San's death and even though he expected that, it was foolish to think that the deaths would end with him. It almost felt like Cheong San's final stand meant almost nothing if more of his beloved friends died afterward. There was an "after."

Cheong San held his head as it periodically throbbed with pain as he made his way to the edge and looked over the view of his school. Not too long from now, it would be a barren wasteland of corpses blown to smithereens by a nuke. Some of those corpses would be people he knew and it struck Cheong San now that one of those people would be his mom.

"What.. what the hell am I doing?" Cheong San braced himself on his arms as he looked over the edge and he shook his head, looking down. Cheong San gripped the edge tightly as he looked down at the grounds below. It had occurred to Cheong San that he couldn't stop Byeong Chan, the apocalypse was still happening. The words that Byeong Chan said that day rang more prominently in his ears as of recently. Words like "Useless", "Wasted", "Goddamn Difference", just kept repeating in his head over and over. Cheong San tried and it turned out that he was absolutely useless and his friends were no safer than they ever were. What difference would it make if he died now compared to when he was supposed to die? Byeong Chan was just too good at that and Cheong San felt like he was always losing.

I don't want to keep losing... but I know that I'll never win... so...

Cheong San, with trembling hands, hoisted himself onto the ledge and stood up there. He felt the immediate tension in his legs and the unsteady balance of standing there on that ledge. Cheong San had a mission and he failed, a mission that held so many lives at stake and that pressure just never went away. It was always hanging over his head and Cheong San realized that he never wanted this. This is one special kind of hell because it showed him what he had to lose and what he was truly up against.