hiding, lurking » pentagon

17

❝ S E V E N T E E N ❞

━ oh, but i am always one step ahead

"Wooseok, I'm scared," Jinho said.

"I was literally about to win that race but it's fine," Wooseok replied, looking away from a lackluster game of Mario Kart. His poor attempt at humor died, wilting like funeral flowers. Jinho, who usually won every race, had been pulling last for every game. Which meant that he'd probably been agonizing the entire time over how to bring up whatever was worrying him. Jinho didn't like to feel like a burden, which somehow translated in his head to hiding how he felt and never speaking about it until he had a huge mental breakdown. Wooseok, while being horrible at both comfort and words, hated seeing Jinho like that and always wanted to tell him that he could talk about it whenever he needed to. But of course, the words could never come.

However, lately, he'd been trying. And it was hard. Did difficulty in comforting devastated friends make you a bad person? He thought so. 

"Why are you scared?" He asked softly. Their controllers hung limp and forgotten in loose grasps. 

"Kino," Jinho replied simply. His eyes were unfocused, staring at a spot on the wall above Wooseok's TV. 

"What about Kino?" Wooseok asked, mind racing, connecting dots, arriving at a conclusion and trying to turn back only to be met with a wall, trapping him with an awful outcome and no way to protect himself from it.

"He's been acting strange and I don't want to think about why."

"It's too late for that, Jinho."

Though Wooseok's words had been gentle, the smaller boy still flinched. 

"When we talk, he sounds monotone. Like he doesn't feel anything anymore, or care about anything. He's not talking as much, and no one else has said he's talked to them. The last time I spoke to him, he told me his camera was broken and his picture frames had somehow ended up in the trash. But it was weird, somehow, I don't know. Like, when he was talking about all this stuff, his words were...stiff, almost, like he wasn't saying them, something was making him say them."

"You realize what that sounds like, right?" Wooseok asked, hoping Jinho would deny it, thinking that he might as well try to hope his dead friends back to life and his own messed-up life back to normal while he was at it. 

"Sounds like he's next."

They fell silent and still, like chess pieces waiting to be moved.

"Can we save him?" Jinho asked,  after the silence began to fill his lungs like thick dust.

"How?"

"He shouldn't be alone."

"But if he's with someone, wouldn't it be easier for him to - to benefit the demon?"

"Don't you think that maybe it feeds off feelings of being alone? That if someone feels like they're alone, it's easier for it to possess them?"

"God, I don't know!" Wooseok cried, a sudden feeling of hopelessness washing over him and for a split second, the entire world turned dark like it would never be bright again. 

"What the hell are we supposed to do?" Jinho asked, a plaintive sound. He choked on his breath and clamped a hand over his mouth, trying not to cry and failing. 

"His parents are going to be out of town this weekend, right? For some business thing they've been planning for weeks. We should make sure that he can't get out of his house and harm anyone else," Wooseok said, panicking because Jinho was crying. "Hey, hey, breathe, okay? Please just breathe."

He scrambled over to Jinho and put an arm around him, but Jinho scooted right up to his chest. Wooseok realized that all Jinho wanted was comfort, so he put his other arm around Jinho too and let him cry. 

"We've thought of something, and once we do it, we might feel better. It's Friday, we should go over to his house tonight and see if he's still acting strange, and if he is, we'll make sure that he can't get out and hurt anyone." Wooseok tried to be rational and calm because God knew they'd never get anywhere if they were both hysterical. But a tiny part of his brain was screaming that this was Hongseok's job, not his, and he could never hope to do it well. 

"O-Okay," Jinho said, and he ignored the sick warning in his gut because right now, any decision was a bad one, and he suspected that this feeling would never truly go away. 

"We're gonna be fine," Wooseok said, but his voice was hollow, the truth scraped out of the words so they just bled from his mouth, empty and skeletal. 

Later that night, once the sun began to set, they got ready to carry out their plan. 

"If we see Kino, we act like we're just swinging by for a visit because I was worried about him. We have to watch him closely to see if he's acting weird. If he is, then I'll stay and talk to him and you go around and make sure that every possible exit is locked. Say you have to go to the bathroom," Jinho said. He had since calmed down and gone into full strategist mode, which made Wooseok feel a tiny bit relieved, but the truth was that they were both just scared teenage boys. 

"What if one of us gets possessed?" 

"Assuming it happens slowly, or we'll somehow know, we can come up with a signal. If we get separated, the other person will still have to know, though."

"What if we tied string or something around our wrists? And we take it off if we feel like something's not right."

Wooseok left the room to grab his mother's sewing kit, leaving Jinho to contemplate what they were about to do. He knew it was stupid, and that it was real, and it might end very very badly, but they had to check on Kino. 

He remembered the jumping in the woods that had been all over the news, and his bad feeling intensified. Maybe another innocent person would get hurt, and they'd know for sure this time who'd done it. Or rather, what had done it. They had to check on Kino. He knew the risk, and it scared him, but the demon's game didn't need to extend to anyone else. Maybe the game could stop here. They could confront it, try to figure out how to kill it. Save Kino. 

Just as he was about to break into a huge sob, the door opened and Wooseok returned. He sat down and began to forage through the kit, coming up with a spool of sheer pink ribbon. 

"We should be able to untie or rip this fairly easily if we have to," Wooseok said, cutting off a piece. He gestured at Jinho to hold out his wrist, and he obliged. Another sob threatened him as he watched Wooseok tie the ribbon around his wrist, and when he had to tie Wooseok's, his hands were shaking so badly he could barely do it. 

They stared at the bows adorning their wrists and couldn't help but think of a dead person dressed in their best clothes before the lid of the casket closed over them forever. 

hhhhh this chapter is Bad and ive tried to make it better literally so many times but it just cant be fixed SIGH

anyway tag yourself im wooseok panicking literally the entire time