Car Crash Club • Monsta X

xxxvi.

"So you're done avoiding me?" Jooheon asks. They're sitting on the bench as usual, and they haven't talked in three weeks. Hyungwon's been in school off and on. Sometimes he puts up a fight against Father. He always loses, and the fallout requires a day or two of healing.

"I'm sorry," Hyungwon says, hands clasped and hanging loosely above his knees. He looks out across the field. He's cold. All the warmth in his life – Father's love for him, believing he was special, believing someone cared about him – has since expired. His touch doesn't warm him anymore, only brings him pain. But Hyungwon's mind is quieter than it has been in a while. There's no confusion anymore, no wondering whether things were wrong, because now he knows with a cold certainty. Things are wrong – have always been wrong – and there is no changing that. "I just needed some time. To think about things."

Jooheon doesn't say anything for a while, and Hyungwon wonders if Jooheon is mad at him. He finds that he doesn't much care. Hyungwon thinks he deserves this much. If Jooheon can't give him space when he needs it, then maybe he doesn't need Jooheon.

For just a moment, Hyungwon feels a flash of rage towards Jooheon. He's the one who shattered the happy illusion Hyungwon had been living. He hadn't questioned the wrongness of everything until he'd seen Jooheon's interactions with his own father. But Hyungwon isn't really mad at him, just sad and frustrated. He wonders if Jooheon has seen the picture of him. He wonders if Jooheon knows it's him.

He hopes not. But he's learned that his hopes are no longer taken into consideration.

"What are you thinking about?" Jooheon asks sometime later.

"Leaving," Hyungwon answers. It's something he's started considering. He knows that if he stays, it won't end. He thinks that maybe if he can get out of this town, get away from Father, then maybe he'll have a chance. Not at being okay, but at a less painful existence. He doesn't know how long he can live like this.

Jooheon looks over at Hyungwon. "What?" he asks. He doesn't know about Hyungwon's secret, and if Hyungwon can help it, he never will. "What do you mean, leaving?"

Hyungwon stares at the horizon, and he wonders where it could take him. "I mean getting on a bus or a train and just going."

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

Hyungwon is ashamed to admit it to himself, but there's a part of him that doesn't want to leave, a part of him that needs Father and doesn't want to be abandoned. But Hyungwon knows Father manipulated him to think that way, and he's trying to be stronger than that tainted part of him.

"Hyungwon, you can't just leave," Jooheon says. The way he says it makes it sound like Hyungwon is crazy for even suggesting it. "What about school? And your family?"

Hyungwon could laugh – or cry – at the irony. "My family," he muses quietly. The other kids in the yard are playing baseball today. Hyungwon can still hear them cheering all those years ago when he was pitching and he struck a kid out. That was a different time, and a different Hyungwon. "They'll be upset," he says after a moment, and it's true. He can see Father going into a rage, destroying everything in Hyungwon's room. He can see Mother pretending not to notice as she sets out only two plates for dinner, already adjusting to her increased share of Father's attention.

"You can't just run away," Jooheon says, and he's very serious for once.

"Maybe not," Hyungwon says, only to satisfy Jooheon in the moment. He's still looking at the horizon. He wants so badly for this nightmare to be over, one way or another.