CHAPTER TWELVE
NEW FACES SAME VOICES
comfort crowd | conan gray
❞this hurt that I'm holding
's getting heavy❝
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HAKKUN SIGHED.
He turned his phone on, meet with the picture of him and her as his lock screen, no new messages, the only thing written over their faces was the time.
5:37 am, which meant she was already about 6 hours too late.
He hated her for being so late and for being so reckless and for doing absolutely anything for them to afford to buy food. More so, though he hated himself for being worried and being unable to sleep without knowing she's back or rather knowing she's alive.
Suddenly, he heard the rustling of keys outside the apartment and the door opened with a swing.
There she stood, her clothes muddy and wet from god knows what she was doing. There was blood leaking out of her black shirt, which he almost wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for the way her hand was trying to cover it from him.
There was a small cut on her lower lip, but most noticeable was the wound by her right temple, which was why her right eye was pinched together and bloodshot, it looked like someone had smashed her head against the asphalt and dragged her across it.
Hakkun winced in his head at the thought of that. Normally when she came home this late, he'd smack her across the face and scold her, but the look in her eyes was so ice-cold that he didn't even dare to make a sound.
As she slowly approached him, laying down the 9mm on the kitchen counter in the process.
When she was standing in front of him, he was even more intimidated, looking down at him with her unreadable expression.
"It's late. You shouldn't be up," she spoke, her voice horse and barely above a whisper, her throat must have hurt and by the blue bruises around her neck, he could guess why.
"What did you do?" Hakkun asked, his voice trembling.
"I did what I had to do."
J pushed past him into their small bathroom, but he followed after her.
While she leaned against the bathtub, he cleaned the wounds on her legs and he was glad she was too tired and exhausted to protest his help.
It was silent, besides the occasional hiss and groan of disapproval from her until Hakkun decided to speak up as he started to stitch the wound on her stomach.
"She sent me another postcard."
J hummed a second before whispering, "Where's she off to now?"
Hakkun sucked in a breath, "Kyoto."
She chuckled, "That's never a good sign."
"Do you... do you think they'll come back?"
"That whore never stays anywhere longer than she has to and her husband doesn't have the balls to come back without her," J hissed, anger filling her stomach again.
"Stop calling her that. She's still our mother," Hakkun muttered as he finished up the wound on her stomach. Covering it with a bandage.
"That woman stopped being a mother to us the moment she walked out that door with all our savings."
He had never seen her this worked up about this topic before, usually, J would brush him off, comfort him rather than talking about her own feelings, but he guessed she was too tired to hide how she truly felt or something finally switched in her tonight.
Hakkun washed his hands in the sink, wanting to be extra careful when taking care of the wound on her head. Tough he took longer than he needed to, enjoying the feeling of the water on his hands as only one thing clouded his mind. He swiftly turned around again and even before he knew it the words he dreaded to ask left his lips in a whisper.
"What would you do if they came back?"
J looked up at him, a shiver running down his spine as he stared into her pitch-black pupils, no more exhaustion or tiredness and she didn't have to say the next words to know what she'd do.
"I'll kill them."
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I felt like I could breathe again, and now that the - what I thought to be the - hardest part was over, I and my teammates were feeling pumped after their small victory and more than motivated to continue on just as planned.
I walked towards the hostages again, standing besides Paris as he inspected each of them closely, picking a few of them out to follow me and Venice to print.
I walked behind the hostages, listening to Santiago's obnoxious yelling from the front I had to stifle a chuckle.
I listened attentively to the speech he was giving the hostages, motivating them into working for them, though they did seem motivated enough by the M14 in my hand.
Arriving I watched him with a sense of adoration in my eyes but still hidden enough to not seem distracted.
The way he carried himself was so peculiar to me, on one hand, he was a ray of sunshine, reckless and careless by the way he strode around the room, his gun hanging loosely out of his pants pocket as if he didn't even plan on using it.
And then there were the times I looked him in the eyes and feared for my life. I feared the way he looked so unbothered by the fact he'd have to kill somebody, by the way, his hand didn't shake and his body didn't even flinch when he pulled the trigger. How it could never take more than one bullet to kill them unless he wanted to have some fun with it.
Santiago was scary in a crazy and psychotic way and I was oh so happy I was on his good side.
His orange-hair bounced as he scribbled onto the glass window with a red edding, though once again, I was getting way too comfortable caught up in my thoughts.
"J?"
A voice behind me spoke, the hand on my shoulder was gripping me in a way I hadn't felt so long but was still so familiar to me. Shyly his thin fingers squeezed around me for just a second.
I didn't turn around, I couldn't.
I gulped, still staring straight ahead where Santiago once stood, though he had moved and the only thing I was now seeing was the red writing on the glass.
"J, is that you?"
A shiver ran down my spine and for a second I just savoured the sound of his voice. He sounded older and more tired, but I assumed if I'd open my mouth now, I'd sound about the same to him.
And then I finally opened my mouth. The words left my mouth too fast to even process what exactly I was doing.
"I'm sorry, but you must have mistaken me with someone."
I caught a glimpse of his eyes and I thought they looked so tired and so lifeless but not one bit terrified. It killed me to see him like this and I suddenly recognised someone in myself, worse than any criminal I could ever imagine. Which gave me the final push to walk away, at first slowly and then it almost felt like a sprint to me.
I took a deep breath, but there was no air left.
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Jungkook didn't want anything to do with Pablo's little suicide mission and decided to go to the only person left for him to talk to about stuff like this without actually bothering them.
Walking up to room 142 now changed into a simple pair of black pants and a shirt he stared down at his feet lost in thought when he saw a strange man crouching over Donghae's bed. He sprinted forward, flinging open the door.
"Hey! Who the hell-"
The man turned around, out of surprise he knocked over the small lamp on the bedside table.
"Oh, erm, I- I'm Doctor Kim. Kim Namjoon, it's nice to meet you."
He struck out his hand and Jungkook carefully shook it, maybe a little tighter than he had to. The brown-haired man carefully looked him up and down. He wore a dark blue cardigan buttoned-up, only the top of his white shirt peeked out of it, paired with a pair of black baggy pants and some black converse that looked very worn out. He didn't look like a doctor.
Namjoon could see the hesitation in his eyes and took his white coat from the seat beside the bed, showing him that, yes indeed, he was a doctor because on the small metal nametag 'KIM NAMJOON' was engraved.
"I- I just came here to check up on him, he is fighting very hard especially for his age and doctor Gonzales had told me he hadn't much hope, but... I don't think I could live with myself knowing I didn't try," Namjoon rambled on, as he walked around the room hastily, stumbling over a cable from time to time, while he carefully documented Donghae's vitals.
Jungkook stared at the man somewhat shocked, Dr Gonzales wasn't the first doctor to give up on his chief but the man in front of him as he stumbled his way through the small room made him feel at ease.
"And... and you? What are you doing here at this hour?"
For a moment they just looked at each other and then Jungkook finally snapped out of it, staring down at the floor with a slightly embarrassed chuckle.
"I.. uh- I don't know anymore, to be honest."
Namjoon was now the one who couldn't keep eye contact with the man in front of him, who really looked too good in those pants for his own good.
"Well, do you maybe want to help me, I need to get some files from the second floor," He sounded very unsure as he said that, which Jungkook thought to be oddly familiar.
Jungkook nodded.
"Sure."
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