INVASION ⋮ norenmin

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Renjun would give anything for that night to not happen. The start of the new week turned into a nightmare.

He was tired and fell asleep pretty fast. But so did he wake up. It was impossible to stay asleep when the living room was so noisy.

The boy opened his eyes and quickly found the two moving silhouettes. He recognized them as Jeno and Jaemin which made him feel nervous all of sudden.

"Renjun!" Jaemin yelled and ran towards the boy. "Your cousin is having a hard time breathing! What should we do?"

Only then did Renjun see that Liling was laying on the floor. A wave of tension and fear ran all over his body. He tried to leave the sofa but at the same time, the man went downstairs. That was like a signal that Renjun was unable to move. After their last encounter, Renjun's heart started to beat faster and he was really close to having a mental breakdown whenever he heard Mr. Kim's footsteps or saw his shadow.

So, the boy froze and stopped whatever he tried to do.

"What's going on?" Mr. Kim asked naturally as if he had no clue that he gave the poisoned food.

"The girl is..."

"What's with her?"

"She's dying."

"And?"

"We have to get her to the hospital," Jaemin groaned, perhaps, getting sick of the man's attitude.

"Hospital? Are you dumb? Why would we take someone like her, if we didn't take you?"

Jaemin snapped.

"It's your fault that it's happening! If you hadn't given them-"

"Since when you're allowed to argue?" the man talked over Jaemin. "I thought my word was the last."

Mr. Kim and Jaemin were shouting at each other, but it wasn't like Renjun cared. His eyes were on Liling all the time. Even with the distance between them, Renjun still was able to see how her chest stopped moving.

Only five out of six survived the eight days.

∗

Renjun faced some serious problems. He suddenly didn't remember which day it was, he confused day and night. All he did was stare at the wall, sometimes at the corpse in the living room. He didn't even sleep although he was tired.

The boy forgot that he had cousins next to him too. He felt them moving but never give them proper attention. He was also mute and didn't hear a lot of things. If someone was talking to him, Renjun didn't know. The boy stopped reacting to his surroundings.

He didn't see when Liling's body got taken away. Renjun just saw that something was missing when he looked away from the wall. As he had a hard time thinking normally, he didn't give much attention to the change. It ended with Renjun staring at the wall again.

Sometimes he felt that he was taken somewhere. He didn't recognize the room as the bathroom but did recognize the face of the person who was with him. Jaemin's actions made Renjun feel something. The way Jaemin was bathing him showed a lot of care. Instead of staring at one spot, Renjun wanted to look at Jaemin and follow what he was doing.

The boy continued doing that when he was seated on the sofa again. He got sad whenever Jaemin disappeared with something or someone he didn't recognize. Renjun saw that it was a girl but had no idea who she was. However, he got happy when Jaemin returned.

He kept staring at Jaemin all the time. He was fed by Jeno, who Renjun also recognized but all he did was lock his eyes on Jaemin. Renjun noticed that Jeno was talking to him but it was hard to understand because his brain didn't let him.