For You and Me

Chapter 21: Wind

Once they are out of sight Jihun turns and begins the long walk home.  As his steps hit the pavement he reaches into his pocket for his headphones.  They aren't there and he tries to think back to when he last even needed them.  

When was the last time he even walked home alone since the whirlwind that was Heejun first grabbed his arm.  He runs his tongue along his lips to wet them and it rushes him with the phantom feeling of Seungjun's lips on his.  

Seungjun. 

Just 5 blocks from the hospital and he is already finding himself missing Seungjun and his honey warmth and his slow kisses.  Jihun shoves his hands into his pockets to stop himself from wrapping his arms around himself. 

Once he reaches the outskirts of the city he checks his phone.  It's already half past 1.  Only 4 more hours until his shift at work.  He slows his pace a bit, his steps unsure of what could be waiting at his apartment. Would his mother be there waiting to keep trying to talk to him?  Would something worse be there?  

His steps take him across the park but freeze before they have completely crossed.  A throbbing in his head starts somewhere towards the back.  He's small again.  So is Charlie.  

"Jihun look out!"  Charlie is yelling as a car swerves in their direction and swerves away at the last second coming to a stop along side a frozen Jihun.  The ball he had been holding drops out of his hands as the man in the driver's seat slowly gets out of the car pulling with him a bat.  Charlie grabs Jihun's arm and starts trying to pull him away.

"Jihun, come on.  We have to run away.  We need to go home."  Charlie  says as he pulls on Jihun's arm desperately trying to get his scaredy cat cousin to move.  The man reaches them and Charlie freezes at Jihun's side as the man slides his predatory gaze across them both.  He crouches in front of Jihun and looks across his features.

"I know you."  Jihun chokes out unable to filter the thought that had pounded it's way through him with the flash of an old photograph hidden away in his father's drawer.  The man nods and pulls in a breath as he straightens to his full height.  Without warning he swings the bat around and hits Jihun squarely in the back of his head knocking him immediately to the ground.  Jihun feels his own momentum wrenching him away from Charlie before the world fades away.

Jihun clutches his head in his hands and the groan that escapes his throat as his legs give out from under him finally pulls him from the memory.  The sound of a passing car makes him jump and his head snaps up.  The car only drives further down the road with a destination of it's own. 

He pulls his hands away from his head and examines them half expecting to see blood there.  The only evidence on them of his past is the noticible tremble in them.  He slowly gets back to his feet and runs one of those hands through his hair while he shoves the other one in his pocket.  When he looks around he notices his phone on the ground next to him and he bends down to pick it up.  

Turning it over he sees even more spider cracking on his screen and when he unlocks it the screen is practically unusable.  He tsks under his breath and shoves it in his pocket with his hand.  

The steps that take him the rest of the way to his apartment feel weighted and heavy and his legs tremble under the pressure.  The wind swirls through the tightknit buildings of the neighborhood he becomes engulfed in with each step.  It breathes across the back  of his neck and his back hunches away. 

The wind follows and he feels the pressure of someone behind him grow more and more with each step.  As he fastens his pace so too does his heart race and bring with it the panic.  Every faint murmuring of a car behind him takes his breath right out of his lungs and he barely breathes until he has closed his apartment door behind himself.