celestial strings | h.js

three.

"You better be okay when I get there," Jisung scolded, his mind flashing back to the bloodied arm you got before you ran away. "How could you just up and leave like that?"

"I'm sorry–" you winced with a squint of your eye, a yelp leaving your lips when a particularly sharp inch tore at your skin.

Jisung furrowed his brows immediately, the grip on his phone tightening as he picked up his pace. "[Name], what is that? Are you okay?"

"Yeah... no, actually. But I am dealing with it," you said through gritted teeth. "Anyway, I just got overwhelmed and my first response was to run away."

Jisung sighed in defeat. He couldn't blame you for that, especially since he knew how much you hated being under the spotlight and how much the crowd drains you out. He just wished you could have asked him for help so he could have done something. He could have left with you to fix your hand, which he assumed you would much rather not go to the hospital for. But you were still in pain, and the fact that he was not there to help you was breaking him apart.

It felt like a piece of his heart just left his chest and started to roam around the world looking for you, and he couldn't protect it. He has no idea where it would go and what would happen to it.

"I think I'm here–oh, please be there," Jisung muttered as he turned a corner and walked straight into the alleyway. He hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket, his legs rushing until he finally saw you sitting all the way at the back corner.

His heart dropped at the sight of you. Hair stuck to your forehead due to the sweat, your bloodied arm still a raging color of fresh redness, and you were breathing heavily in pain as you tried finishing off with the tightened blue string around your forearm. Jisung felt tears brimming behind his eyes as a lump of fear jumped to this throat, forcing him to let out incoherent sounds of protest as he rushed to approach you before dropping to his knees.

"No, no–what are you doing? Stop, you're hurt–you're hurting yourself."

His voice came out croaked and his hands were fumbling in the air, somewhere close to yours in hopes to stop your movements. But still, he wasn't sure if he should stop you because he knew he wasn't knowledgeable enough in this matter.

"Jisung, I have to do this. This has gone far too deep," you explained calmly despite wanting nothing more than to break down in front of him. "If I try to heal it, the string will get ripped out of my skin. It'll hurt way more than me doing it slowly now."

His friends finally made it to the end of the alleyway then, and you could only give all three of them a firm nod before returning to Jisung.

"You can help me by making the pattern I taught you this morning. Can you do that?" You groaned out.

Jisung nodded. "Wh–what do I have to do?"

"Just go into my bag and find a green string, the same amount I made you use this morning. You are going to have to make it for me because my bones are shattered," you instructed, feeling him pause in the middle of going to your backpack. And when Jisung gave you a verbal agreement, his voice was much more watery than before. "After you make it, try slotting it onto my hand."

Jisung was trying very hard to focus on his task. His eyes darted between his hands and you, his mind jumping between remembering what to do and feeling anxious that you were literally going through so much pain right in front of him. He felt like crying, the tears threatening to spill over little by little, but he held it in just so he could appear stronger than his heart was.

You could see him trembling from your peripheral vision as you focused on taking the previous blue string off your forearm, and you could tell by the way he was cursing that he had to start over multiple times. Jisung was getting frustrated, fearsomely frustrated that he couldn't get the pattern done faster, and he was starting to blame himself for everything that has happened thus far.