"When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it. And it loves you back, and isn't that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows. But it also devours."
― Raymond Carver
--
He shut the door behind himself, locking it. It was pointless since they probably had spare keys, but it made him feel safer to have a barrier between him and the horrible people outside.
Then he proceeded farther into the room.
He passed a bathroom on the right before coming upon the bedroom. As promised, Minhyuk was curled up on the bed, back against the headboard and knees tucked into his chest, left wrist hanging low and handcuffed to the bedpost.
He looked up as Hyunwoo entered, and his face lit up with the barest glimpse of hope before his expression shattered, his eyes guttering out.
"Why?" he asked after a moment, his voice hollow. "Why are you here? Why does it have to be you?"
Hyunwoo quickly realized that Minhyuk had come to the conclusion that he was here to abuse him like everyone else. Only not quite like everyone else because Minhyuk knew Hyunwoo, and being violated by a stranger was altogether more bearable than facing the same treatment from someone of familiarity. "No, no, Minhyuk, I'm not-"
"Don't say my name," Minhyuk snapped, closing his eyes. "Don't say my name like you know me and then tear me apart."
"Minhyuk, I'm not here to- I'm not here to hurt you. I promise," Hyunwoo said. He put his hands up in a defensive position and knelt on the floor to demonstrate his intentions, and Minhyuk opened his eyes and stared at him doubtfully.
"I've been trying to find you," Hyunwoo said, trying to keep his words slow and even and comprehensible whilst they were rushing in his mind like a wildfire eating up the coast. "You and Hyungwon. I've been searching for you, and when I heard you might be...might be here, I had to come and find out."
Minhyuk just stared at him. Finally, "You're here...to find me?" he asked in a small, skeptical voice.
Hyunwoo nodded. "Kihyun has been very worried about you," he said, and Minhyuk's face pinched up, eyes growing wet even as he looked down, rubbing his face against his shirt to hide them. "Your family, too," he added as an afterthought. He hoped it was true. Minhyuk at least deserved to hear it, regardless of the veracity of the statement.
"Kihyun's gonna be pissed at me," Minhyuk said, laughing and crying at the same time. "He told me not to go off with Hendy, but I...I was stupid I didn't listen, and-"
"It's okay," Hyunwoo said after a moment before fumbling with the keys in his hand. "H-Here," he said, getting Minhyuk's attention before tossing the keys onto the bed. Minhyuk stared at them for a moment before grasping them with his right hand and picking out the small silver key. He inserted it into the lock and twisted this way and that for a moment before the cuff clicked free, and he pulled his wrist into his chest, rubbing at the red skin.
"So you're going to take me home?" he asked after a second, and Hyunwoo swallowed.
"I..."
"Oh." Quiet disappointment. Lowered eyes, upturned lips. Hands pulling in tighter around his knees.
"If it's safe," Hyunwoo quickly added. "I have other officers ready to take all of you home, but they need to know that you're all safe first." He paused, biting at his lip. "Is there any reason that wouldn't be true? Any reason to think that you're in danger of physical harm?"
Minhyuk shrugged, looking down at the bedsheet. Even though the bed was at least a queen, he was hunched up in the top corner of it, and despite freeing his wrist, he'd only seemed to collapse in on himself further. "They have a guy."
"A guy? Gu, outside? The old guy?"
Minhyuk shook his head before shrugging. "They have another guy. He's got a gun, and he hangs around to make sure nothing's going wrong. Like if one of the people coming in does something they're not supposed to, or if one of the kids try getting out."
"Did you try getting out?" Hyunwoo asked softly.
Minhyuk bobbed his head forward. His bangs were too long now, and they fell in front of his eyes, hiding them from Hyunwoo. "Once, the second day. Someone was...here...and once I got the chance, I ran for the door and got outside." He gave a small chuckle. "Buck naked. I should have been ashamed, but I wasn't, that was the last thing I was thinking about." His grin faded. "I wanted...to find Hyungwon, but...I didn't know where they were keeping him. So I told myself I'd come back and get him out, I just...I had to get out first." He wiped at one of his eyes, shaking his head. "But then the guy came, a-and he beat me so bad, I just laid in the bathtub for a full day, couldn't even move after I washed off the blood." Minhyuk tried for another smile, but his eyes fell short of it. "They beat you if you're not...you know, cooperative...so, so I..."
He sniffled and rubbed at his nose, looking away, shame painting his face with burning cheeks. "I just didn't want to get hit anymore."
"That's okay," Hyunwoo said in a soft voice. "You protected yourself. That was all you could do. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Whatever you've done – whatever's been done to you, that's not your fault, Minhyuk."
Minhyuk's soft chuckle told Hyunwoo that he disagreed, but he didn't argue about it. Instead, he turned to look at Hyunwoo. "If you can only take one of us tonight, can you get Hyungwon out? This whole thing is my fault, and he...It was like Kihyun said, he told me to stay away from Hendy because he was bad news, but-" He wiped at his nose again before scrunching it up and sniffling again. "-we were just so hungry, me and Hyungwon, and Hendy said..." A pause. "He said he knew a way we could get money, and I- I asked him if it involved drugs because we didn't want any part of that, and he said it didn't, that it would be fine, and..."
He broke off, setting his face down in his palms. "And I said okay, and Hyungwon said he'd go if I went, because...because he trusts me, and I...and so, it's my fault that he's here too. I was dumb so I deserve what I got but Hyungwon shouldn't've gotten caught up in this."
"Nobody deserves to be treated this way," Hyunwoo corrected firmly. "It doesn't matter what you did or said, nothing would have made this okay. Do you understand that, Minhyuk?"
He shrugged but went back to his point. "So, can you take Hyungwon with you?" he asked, looking up.
"Do you know where he's at?" Hyunwoo asked, and Minhyuk nodded.
"He's in room twelve, I think."
"When did you see him last?"
Minhyuk shrugged, looking up at the ceiling. "It's hard to keep track of days, but...maybe five – six? – days ago...They gathered all of us up in a room so..." He swallowed, his face paling. "So they – there were a couple of them – could pick which ones they wanted, and..." There was a slight pause before he shut his eyes and cried out. "And they picked him and not me and I felt, I felt so guilty, and he looked...so scared, and he asked me to help him, but I didn't know- I didn't know how, I tried to make them pick me instead but they pushed me out of the way."
He rocked his body back and forth, hitting the headboard with each beat, but Hyunwoo knew that to touch him would be to frighten him. "They dragged me back to my room but the others kids and Hyungwon had to stay, had to stay with all of those horrible awful people and-" Minhyuk squeezed his eyes shut even harder, a pained whine coming out of his throat. The rocking slowed to a stop after a minute as he put the thoughts out of his mind, and when Minhyuk swallowed and looked over at Hyunwoo, he seemed slightly calmer but still noticeably distressed. "They called him twelve and they called me seven, so I think...I think that's his room. Twelve. Because I'm seven."
"It's not your fault," Hyunwoo tried to say yet again, but Minhyuk just looked away and refused to speak.
"I'm going to call my partner and let him know what you told me," Hyunwoo said after a long moment, pulling out his phone and dialing Jooheon's number. He let out a tense sigh of relief as he heard the signal connecting.
"Hey," Jooheon said after having picked up immediately. "Are you okay? How's it going?"
"I'm here with Minhyuk," Hyunwoo said, and he saw Minhyuk tense on the bed at the mention. "Do you have our location?"
"Yeah. We followed you after the vehicle switch. You're right on the outskirts of Tampa now. Is it safe for us to move in?"
"I don't know," Hyunwoo said. "Minhyuk said there's at least one guy out here who's got a gun. I didn't see him earlier, but I have reason to believe he's nearby."
"Homeless guy in the alley?"
"Not him. A different guy. But Gu – that's the guy in the alley – he might have a gun too, I don't know. I didn't see one but he could have it stashed under the newspapers. He's also got keys to all the rooms."
"Hyunwoo, we can't move in until we get eyes on this second guy," Jooheon said after a second in the same tone someone would use to tell Hyunwoo that his pet goldfish had died.
"I know," Hyunwoo said, exhaling heavily. "Just, call me back when you see him."
"Will do."
They hung up, and Minhyuk looked up with hopeless eyes as though he'd heard every word. "They're not coming to get us?"
Hyunwoo's heart felt as though someone had just smashed it with a meat hammer, trying to flatten it out to make it easier to cut into small pieces. "They're coming, just not yet," Hyunwoo said. "It's not safe until we know where the guy with the gun is. If they rush in without having eyes on him-"
"He could shoot your cop friends, I get it," Minhyuk mumbled, and Hyunwoo shook his head.
"No, Minhyuk- well, yes, that could happen, but they're prepared for that. They have vests on to protect them. But you kids don't. That's what they're worried about, that this guy might hurt you kids, and we don't want that to happen."
"Oh." Minhyuk was quiet for a while, but that was okay. Hyunwoo didn't want to rush anything, and they had several hours, after all. "It's okay if you can't take us home," Minhyuk said after a few minutes, and Hyunwoo looked up with a frown. "I didn't even think anyone would come after me and Hyungwon."
"I'm not going to leave without you guys," Hyunwoo said, but the words held empty in the air without anything to substantiate them.
Minhyuk just shrugged, still staring down at the bedsheets as he drew patterns on them with his finger. "You might not have a choice."
Hyunwoo's phone rang, and he flipped it open immediately. "Are you guys ready?" he asked.
A sigh from Jooheon. "We can't, Hyunwoo. Not yet. We just spotted the guy you're talking about – we're pretty sure that's the guy – but he went into one of the kids' rooms. We can't move in when he's in there with a gun."
Hyungwon would forever feel guilty that his immediate question was "Which room?"
Jooheon paused as though he found the question sort of strange. "Ten, why?"
Hyunwoo exhaled. He felt horribly guilty for having the thought, but all he could feel was relief that it hadn't been room twelve. All it meant was that it was some other kid being abused, and his relief in that fact was horrible and tangible and disgusting, but it was all he could process for the time being. "Fine. Tell me when he leaves."
He shut the phone to find Minhyuk staring at him with a small, resigned smile. "That's okay," Minhyuk said. "We didn't expect to be rescued anyways. It's nice enough that you're here and not somebody else. Can't we just enjoy that?"
Hyunwoo wanted to cry because he should have been the one consoling the kid. "Minhyuk, I promise you, we're going to-"
"Shh," Minhyuk said, putting a finger up to his lips. "No more promises. I don't want to expect anything other than this, okay? Let's just talk for a while."
And so they talked since that was what Minhyuk wanted. He told a lot of stories about how bossy Kihyun was, but it was clear in every word that Minhyuk respected and admired the older boy.
Hyunwoo was mostly quiet, just listened and nodded and asked questions. He didn't think sharing the life of an adult would be anything but boring, but he liked hearing Minhyuk ramble on about his own small adventures. It gave Hyunwoo hope that maybe Minhyuk would be able to add new happy memories soon. At one point, Minhyuk took a break to go pee, but then he was back two minutes later with endless more stories to spill.
All too soon there was a knock at the door.
Minhyuk stiffened mid-story, and Hyunwoo looked between the door and Minhyuk.
"That's the five-minute warning," Minhyuk whispered before slipping his wrist back into the handcuff and shutting it with a click. "You have to go."
"No, I..." Hyunwoo's breath caught. He looked around the room as though searching for a clue or a magical method of escape, but it was still just a dreary motel room. No magic.
"Go," Minhyuk urged, tossing the keys back to Hyunwoo. They fell at his feet. "And help me-" Minhyuk pulled at the bedsheets, yanking them out of alignment and trying to rumple them. "Come on, we have to make it look like, you know. Help me out, I can't reach that far. I should've done this before I put the handcuff on. Stupid."
Hyunwoo swallowed but nodded, hurrying to the end of the bed and pulling at the sheets so they appeared disorderly. Then he called Jooheon.
"What's the holdup?" Hyunwoo snapped.
"We've got eyes on the guy. He's been lingering in the alley for a bit, popping into rooms occasionally to escort a client out, and he's outside your room right now. I told you, we can't move until he's in a position where he won't be able to hurt the kids."
"Fuck," Hyunwoo muttered before looking over at Minhyuk apologetically. "Sorry," he added before focusing back on the conversation. "Jooheon, you guys have to-"
"We'll stay here the whole night," Jooheon promised. "As soon as he's distanced from the kids, we'll move in. I promise, Hyunwoo. But you have to go now or they'll get suspicious."
"But..." Hyunwoo looked over at Minhyuk with wet eyes. "Jooheon, they're right here, can't we just...What if I-"
"Hyunwoo, if any of the kids get hurt tonight, I know you'll hold that against yourself for your entire life," Jooheon said gently. "You did your job. You got the location. So please, let us do our job. Trust us to see this through."
"Fine," Hyunwoo agreed in a rough voice, turning away because he couldn't bear to meet Minhyuk's eyes. "Just- please, you have to save these kids."
"We will," Jooheon said firmly, not a shred of doubt or uncertainty in his voice. "And Hyunwoo, I'll call you just as soon as we do."
"All right." He took a deep breath. "All right, thanks."
He hung up and turned to look at Minhyuk. "They're saying it's still not safe to get you guys, but they're going to camp out the entire night and wait for a good opportunity. They're going to bring you home, Minhyuk." The words I promise hesitated before his lips, but he remembered Minhyuk's earlier request, and he let them dissolve on his tongue.
"Okay," Minhyuk said.
"Do you trust me?" Hyunwoo asked after a moment.
Minhyuk hesitated before he nodded, and his eyes were clear. "I trust you."
Hyunwoo smiled even though his stomach felt weak. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten that day. He'd known inherently that he would have thrown it all up if he'd had the chance. "All right," he said to the boy. "Trust me when I say that my friends are going to bring you home."
Minhyuk just nodded before pointing to the door. "You have to go."
Hyunwoo swallowed painfully but nodded, scooping the keys off the ground before nodding at Minhyuk and exiting the room.
The man who Minhyuk had described was leaning against the wall outside the door. He went into the room for a minute, presumably to check and make sure that Minhyuk was properly cuffed to the bedpost and that there weren't any debilitating injuries, before he came back outside. He took the keys from Hyunwoo, locked the door, and tested the knob before nodding and tossing the keys to Gu just as the black truck from earlier pulled up.
"Any issues?" the shorter man from earlier asked the grunt with the gun.
"No injuries," he reported. "Cuffed to the bed."
"Good," the shorter man said before giving Hyunwoo an uneven grin. "No additional fees, then. Get in the back."
Hyunwoo nodded and got in the car as before, and once more, he experienced a strange nausea as they drove him back to the lot from before. His car door opened sometime letter, and he stepped out to find himself just a parking spot away from his car.
"Call the same number as before when you want to schedule your next appointment," the shorter man grunted before the car pulled away with a screech.
Hyunwoo patted his pockets with shaky hands for his own car keys only to panic when he found them missing. He checked all his pockets again before trying the driver's side door and finding it unlocked. With a heavy exhale, he slid into the seat to find that he'd left the keys in the ignition the entire time due to his nerves.
He laughed then, a sad and nervous laugh that quickly bubbled into tears, and he sat in the lot for half an hour or more, forehead resting against the steering wheel with Minhyuk's eyes dancing in the dark spots of his vision.
Eventually, he turned the engine on and drove home, going ten miles under the speed limit the whole way. Earlier, he'd felt the need for quickness, the need for acceleration, the need to act in urgency, but now that his part of it was over, he felt slow and heavy and reluctant. He didn't feel closure because he hadn't been the one to personally walk the kids out of their rooms, and he wouldn't get to be that person. He just had to trust that someone would be that person, that someone would do that for those boys and girls, that someone would bring them home. Even if it wasn't him. As long as it was somebody.
He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, but even after he'd turned the engine off, he continued sitting in his car and staring ahead at the bushes that served as a barrier between the lot and the street. He couldn't quite put it into words, but he had the sinking feeling that to go inside would be to give up, that he had to be here, ready to go at any moment.
And so he never got out of the car.
--
He must have dozed off at least lightly because the ringing of his phone woke him up at some later time.
"Hmm," Hyunwoo responded, rubbing his bleary eyes as he struggled to lift the phone to his ear. His eyes gradually migrated from the wheel to the bushes to the clock to see that it was just past 4:30 in the morning.
"We got the kids," Jooheon said, a note of relief but also fatigue in his voice. "We're heading back to the station now."
Hyunwoo sat up straight in his seat and once more patted down his pockets before checking the ignition to find the keys waiting for him. He had to stop doing that. "I'll meet you there," he said, and then he hung up and turned the key in the ignition.
--
He made it to the station in ten minutes after driving faster than normal, which he then regretted because he was left waiting in the parking lot. The anxiety within him seem to build every minute until finally, finally he saw Jooheon's car pull in, followed by several others.
Hyunwoo stepped out of his car, remembering to grab his keys this time, and he'd just managed to shut and lock the car by the time Jooheon killed his engine.
"You got them?" Hyunwoo asked, still doubtful even though Jooheon had called him personally as promised. But until he saw the kids, he wouldn't be able to believe with complete certainty that they were okay.
"See for yourself," Jooheon said, yawning as he opened the back door and waved at the figures inside to come out.
Minhyuk stepped out first, looking up at Hyunwoo and giving him a weak smile. Then Hyungwon slid out from next to him, and he stared down at the ground until Minhyuk nudged his shoulder.
"Sorry," he mumbled, looking up for a brief moment to meet Hyunwoo's eyes before his eyes slipped down, down, down back to the pavement. "Thank you," he added, his voice small and emotionless, almost like he was talking from a distance.
"No need to thank us," Jooheon said. "I'm just sorry that it took us this long to bring you guys home."
Minhyuk wiped at his eyes and sniffled, but Hyungwon didn't react, just kept staring at the fractured blacktop. The same process was repeating with the other cars that had pulled in; kids were stepping out of the backseats and looking around like frightened deer. Nearly two dozen kids in total.
"C'mon, let's get you all inside where it's warm. Maybe we can scrounge up some snacks and hot cocoa," Jooheon suggested, and Minhyuk smiled, pulling Hyungwon along after him as Jooheon led them into the building.
Hyunwoo stayed behind for a moment and leaned against his car, exhaling as the parking lot emptied out to leave only himself. He waited for all the anticipation and anxiety to exit, but it didn't. It continued to weigh him down until he felt like he might never go inside if he didn't physically push himself off from against the car.
He did after a minute, and he dragged his heavy self into the station.
--
"Hyunwoo, this is Hoseok," Jooheon introduced, clapping one hand on Hoseok's shoulder and the other on Hyunwoo's.
"Nice to meet you," Hoseok said with a warm smile despite the dark bags under his eyes that told Hyunwoo he'd been pulled out of bed for this.
"Thanks but I'm fine," Hyunwoo said, shaking his outstretched hand nonetheless.
"Well, I'd still like to talk to you later if you're willing, but my first priority is to talk with the kids," Hoseok said, and Hyunwoo immediately felt stupid for assuming Jooheon had dragged the psychologist here purely on Hyunwoo's account.
"I'm sorry, I-"
"It's perfectly okay," Hoseok said with another smile. "Kids who suffer trauma like these react to it in all different ways, and it's important that we identify which children will be able to recover more easily and which children will need additional resources to heal."
"How could anyone recover from something like this?" Hyunwoo asked, not yet capable of filtering his thoughts.
Hoseok's eyes conveyed both his sadness and empathy; it was like looking into a well of emotions. It made Hyunwoo somehow uncomfortable because he often hid his emotions from his face, and Hoseok seemed to be the exact opposite. "Kids are a lot stronger than you'd think," he said softly. "But I agree that what happened was terrible." He paused to look down at his watch. "I need to get started, but you're welcome to watch. I just ask that you do so from the observation room instead of entering the room with me – the more adults in the room, the more anxious the kids will be."
Jooheon and Hyunwoo both nodded, and Hoseok gave a small wave before heading off to the interrogation rooms where they were purportedly keeping the kids for now.
"Everything went okay?" Hyunwoo asked after a second. "No one got hurt?"
"No one got hurt," Jooheon confirmed with a nod. "Listen, Hyunwoo..."
Hyunwoo tensed, preparing himself for bad news, but Jooheon just set a hand on his shoulder. He looked older than he had just yesterday, somehow.
"Thanks for...for trusting us. I know it had to be hard to walk out of the room and leave the kid behind, but you let us do our job, and everyone ended up coming home safely as a result."
Hyunwoo nodded before looking down the hallway Hoseok had taken. "Can we...can we go watch?"
Jooheon nodded, a small smile slipping onto his lips as though he'd been waiting for Hyunwoo to ask. "Sure. But first...I need coffee."
--
published 02/04/21 (mm/dd/yy)
4292 words