After Dark 》Minsung

Final 》Where Paradise Grows

"I can do it," Minho gulped the muttered encouragement beneath his breath, hands clenching up by his sides as he bundled around the fabric of his favorite white hoodie to collect what encouragement that spilling fabric could pool into his clenching fists. Comfort against the war he was about to wage once he passed the final threshold of a battle. Staring back to the intimidating loom of the closed door in front of him. The familiar shade of painted gray in the dim light of the narrow hallway, casting the gloom of warping shadows through the carpeted floors beneath his obstinate front against what dread those silhouettes sunk into his heart. The pictures and album awards hung framed in the length of that gothic corridor, suddenly so much more drafty than any Transylvania castle which may hold the undead Lord of a vampire inside. Maybe that house did, the two parasites which leeched his sanity from his body whenever he loved to be within their presence.

Beside him, his little shithead of a younger pipsqueak brother tapped his shoulder with encouraging fists. Reluctantly, while Minho forced his trembling gaze off from the demonic iron soldier of the armored doorway bulked beneath unbreakable titanium to block him from ever truly connecting to the two beyond the trenches, Felix bumped his cheerful fists in the air. Some kind of encouragement to the obviously terrified Minho. What? Terrified? No. No, he wasn't terrified, it's not like he didn't sleep at all that previous night from his nerves, and it wasn't like he was on a phone call with Jisung five minutes ago for encouragement, no. No. He wasn't scared or anything. Totally not. Though, Felix, his earrings jostling with the silky shirt of the casino uniform, seemed to think he was petrified as he gave the attempt of encouragement, "You can do it."

"Yeah, I can do it," The totally not horrified and statued excuse of a man that Lee Minho became in front of that doorway spoke back to him with totally not rigid and not unsteady words that felt about as comfortable to him as deepthroating a bullet train. No. Not even a little. His voice didn't stumble and his voice didn't shake over itself and nO HIS VOICE DIDN'T CRACK SHUT UP. He forced a chuckle from the icky slime coating his pained throat from working properly, turning back to the opponent of the doorway again. Forgetting Felix's existence while he tried to swallow back his fear, "Worse that happens is they hate me and never want to see me again."

"Minho that is not going to happen, those two love you," Felix argued back to him, nearly punching Minho's arm to convince him of those words. As if physical assault against his already sore muscles would be considered an encouragement and not a crime.

He simply brushed the throbbing in his arm off, whispering out a soft, "Okay."

"Okay," Felix repeated.

In the quiet of the hallway, Minho turned back to Felix. Bringing his attention away from the inevitable future coming barreling toward him as they stared at one another.

His brother giving him an uncharacteristically blank stare while he waited for the older to open the door and press through on his own. The houseplant stare. Unthinking. Unmoving. Not quite the typical NPC stance as he folded his arms over his chest and quirked an eyebrow up at him. Though he looked about done with all of Minho's piling antics, five seconds away from ripping the frightening entrance of the Rat Cave wide open and confessing his older's deepest secrets to his closest friends for him so this could be over with.

Minho looked away from Felix's antsy glare turned scowl staring back to him, and huffed out again to control his building nerves, "Okay."

"Okay."

A silence stretching between them that only allowed the anticipation of the coming conversation to nibble away at his nerves. Growing smaller in the face of that door staring back to him with the judgemental eyes of a persecutor come to weigh his heart against a feather, his mind against his will to continue forward. A world so unfamiliar, so unexplored while his body shrunk to the size of a squeaky mouse scurrying against the ground. Feeling the same as he did the first night he met with Jisung but unpleasantly so, every bit of his body shivering with an anxiousness trying to comprehend what would happen once he entered that rabbithole.