Hands, squeezing at his neck, each finger straining. Hyungwon's vision was a pond, each stone skip rippling out in reds and blues and blacks. Through the spots in his vision, he could see the hands that threatened to end him, but not the face.
Someone was killing him, and he didn't know who.
Hyungwon gasped abruptly. He was just beginning to run out of oxygen. It was a strange feeling, reaching for more, expecting it to be there as it always had, but coming up empty. Hyungwon's own fingers scrabbled against the ones suffocating him, trying to gain a hold and pry the other off, but his fingers slid over the smooth skin, slipping right off. He held up a hand to his attacker, a hand that was ignored.
It fell to his side, and then
Hyungwon died.
Another strange sensation. You live your whole life tuning out the white noise, but then it all cuts out to true silence. In a sense, it's terrifying.
The hands around his neck loosened, and Hyungwon fell limp to the ground, none of his muscles responding to his call to break the fall. From his position looking down a grassy hill, he could see the night sky, the moon oddly misshapen and skewed.
Then he felt fingers unbuttoning his shirt one by one, the hands oddly delicate in their motions despite their previous actions. The disembodied hands began to take off his shirt and-
"Hyungwon!"
Hyungwon choked, trying to inhale all the air at once and coughing instead. He wheezed, pulling air into his lungs bit by bit. He felt dizzy, nauseous.
"Hyungwon, thank God," Changkyun mumbled, pulling Hyungwon into a close embrace, holding him tightly.
"Let go," Hyungwon gasped, pushing Changkyun way, and Changkyun released him, hurt in his eyes, but the feeling of being hugged was altogether too similar to the feeling of being suffocated - an applied pressure, intimate and purposeful. "Sorry," Hyungwon said, his shaking hand tapping the top of Changkyun's. "I can't- not right now, I can't-"
Changkyun just nodded, capturing Hyungwon's shaking hand in both of his and holding it still. He looked down, not meeting Hyungwon's eyes. "You stopped breathing, Hyungwon. And I...I didn't know if you were going to start again. I was scared."
Hyungwon nodded, not saying anything. He knew it would only upset Changkyun, and he didn't want to upset the younger boy, but he couldn't exactly say that he was wrong. And he was still quite shaken from what he'd seen.
The four of them had taken the carpet. Jooheon had offered his own bed to Hyungwon and Changkyun, who had refused, which left the carpet or the couch. Changkyun had gotten rather used to sleeping next to Hyungwon, however, so they both opted for the carpet, leaving Wonho to take the couch and Minhuk and Shownu to join Changkyun and Hyungwon.
Both Minhyuk and Shownu were also awake, Shownu still lying down but angled toward Hyungwon, whereas Minhyuk had sat up, his back against the couch, and was watching with worry in his eyes.
"What happened?" Minhyuk asked, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Changkyun and Hyungwon.
Changkyun shot him a harsh look. "He's not ready to talk about-"
"It's okay," Hyungwon said, closing his eyes and letting himself focus on breathing. It was funny how scary it had been to have it ripped away, and yet he knew he'd be taking it for granted once more in just a few minutes.
"Well?" Minhyuk asked.
Hyungwon opened his eyes. "I..." He blinked, unsure of what to say. His mouth hung open for several beats, his chest still heaving up and down, although less violently than earlier. "I didn't stop the movie," he said, his voice soft, words mainly for himself but open for the others as well.
They were quiet until Changkyun turned and smack Wonho's leg, and Wonho jolted.
"What- what was that for?!" he asked, groaning and turning over.
"Your stupid idea almost killed Hyungwon!" Changkyun yelled, smacking Wonho's leg again, and Wonho sat up.
"What?!"
"He stopped breathing. His face stared turning purple, man."
The two of them began bickering back and forth as to whose fault it was and whether or not Hyungwon was okay, but Hyungwon tuned them out.
The moon, he thought suddenly. The moon was so strange. It was supposed to be perfectly round, but the edges weren't lining up, like someone had cut it out of construction paper and hadn't fit it together perfectly.
The image of the moon was clear in his mind above all else. The face was still a mystery to him, and even the hands weren't that distinctive.
But the moon, the moon he remembered.
"The moon..."
"What's he talking about?" Minhyuk whispered to Shownu, whose lips twitched downward.
"I don't know. Sometimes, we live in our own worlds. We make our own definitions and our own meanings, and we don't allow anyone else to be a part of that," Shownu said, his voice low enough so that only Minhyuk could hear him. "Maybe it means something to him, but we'll never know."
The bedroom door swung inward, and Jooheon stalked out, his face all pinched-up. "Wonho, Changkyun, stop yelling at each other! All you two have done is fight, and I'm honestly sick of it! If you two can't..."
Jooheon's voice faded as Hyungwon's focus intensified. "The moon..." he repeated, tilting his head and staring down at the carpet, his eyes running around the rectangular border while his mind processed what he'd seen and tried to find a logical explanation.
His eyes had traced two laps around the carpet before his head snapped up and he cut off Jooheon. "The moon," he said, his voice insistent, and a small smile spread to his lips as a giggle spilled forth.
They all looked at him like...well, like he was crazy.
Maybe he was.
"The moon," he repeated, his laughter dissipating. "Don't you see?"
"Hyungwon, explain what you mean," Changkyun said slowly, turning to his friend. "Did you see something important?"
Hyungwon nodded, a smile still on his face. "The moon," he repeated yet again.
Changkyun ignored a sigh from one of the others. If it was important to Hyungwon, then they should take it seriously, too. "What's so important about the moon, Hyungwon?"
"It was all cut-up. The edges didn't match," Hyungwon said, something light in his voice. He held the answer to a riddle, and he wanted someone else to see it as well.
"Okay," Changkyun said, frowning slightly. "Do you guys know what that means?" he asked, turning to the others, but Hyungwon spoke up again, saving them from fumbling for an answer that none of them knew.
"A lake," Hyungwon said. "It was a lake that I saw. I didn't see the moon. I saw the moon's reflection. That's why it was weird. The water. A lake."
