The Car Crash Club • Monsta X

i.

He woke up after the accident to the beeping of a heart monitor.

Sometimes, he could still hear it.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Hyungwon jolted awake, fist clenched above his alarm clock, gasping for breath.

He set his hand down gently, silencing the device, before looking around his room. A small night light shaped like a goldfish was plugged into the far outlet, giving off just enough illumination to make out where one wall ended and another began. He'd never slept with a night light before; they'd bothered him, kept him from sleeping. But he didn't much enjoy sleeping these days, anyway.

He dragged his hands down over his face, finger pads walking over raised bumps. His face would heal, they'd told him. His body would heal. Other things, not so much.

His fingers tensed, stopping at the ridge of another scar. He wanted to dig his nails into the raw skin there, wanted to dig in and rip at the seams holding his face together.

But he set his hands down on top of the duvet and waited a moment.

He used to pray every morning. His family wasn't religious. He wasn't sure how exactly he'd fallen into a belief his family didn't share, but they'd never stopped him. But now, even when he folded his hands, nothing came to mind. Nothing to pray for.

No one to pray for.

He set his hands back down, palms gliding over the smooth fabric. He knew that if he looked closely, he'd see blood still caked beneath his finger nails. They'd tried to scrub it off. The first few nights out of the hospital, he'd tried, too. But it had stayed. Another reminder. Not that he needed more.

He got out of bed and headed into the bathroom. He turned the water on and stepped under the shower head. It took him a few minutes to realize that it was running cold water, but when he put his hand on the handle to turn up the temperature, he stopped, realizing that there was no point in doing so. He turned off the water instead.

He stepped out of the shower without ever having even touched the soap, and he stopped on the bath rug, realizing he'd forgotten to bring a change of clothes.

He grabbed a towel off the rack and wrapped it around his waist before stepping out into the cool hallway. Goosebumps formed on his arms as he walked down to his room, water dripping everywhere and wet footprint silhouettes following him. Water ran down from his hair, falling into his eyes and running down the back of his neck before eventually being absorbed by the towel. He threw on an outfit, colors flashing in front of his eyes but not registering in his brain. He stepped outside the room before turning and walking back in, picking up the towel he'd dropped on the floor and tossing it into the hamper. He was supposed to keep his room clean, or someone would yell at him. Someone...

He left the room.

—

The walk was long. Half an hour there, half an hour back. He'd originally planned on going to a prestigious university several hours away, but that had changed like everything else. The local university was close enough that Hyungwon could keep living in his home and walk to class on weekdays.

The music was loud in his ears. Therapists and psychologists and whatever they were called kept telling him about the "transformative powers of music" and how it might help him somehow. He'd flipped through genres, the music getting louder and angrier with each new addition, but it still didn't have the effect he thought they'd wanted. It just made his world noisier, which he supposed was okay. Things had gotten too quiet recently.

He fingered his face mask, pulling it up a little higher up on his face before tugging his hood forward to hide the top half of his face in shadow. He used to be proud of his face. Grades, he'd always had to work for. But he'd been blessed with beauty, as his mom had told him when he was growing up.

He gave the hood another tug.

He arrived at the campus and spent the first hour trying to figure out where things were while he missed his first class. He walked in several minutes early to the second one, taking a seat in the far back where people would be unlikely to notice him or attempt to talk with him. The clock hit the hour, and the professor entered the room along with a few out-of-breath students.

Hyungwon sat still. Didn't listen. And when everyone else got up to leave, he did too. And he went to another room, and sat in another seat near the back, and he didn't listen then either.

Eventually he went home.

He went to sleep.

And then did the whole thing over again.

hello friends, welcome back to a new story! thanks for checking it out :) you guys can be proud that you were all here since the beginning. there's a lot i want to get across in this book, and i hope i'm able to do so! in the meantime, if y'all want to say hi, drop me a comment here so i can meet you :) thanks and enjoy!