Chapter Text
The blaring of Felix’s alarm cuts through his sleep, the way it does every Monday morning without fail. It still gives him a near heart attack every time, and he propels himself out of bed in a frantic effort to make the racket stop. He rubs hard at his eyes, feeling even more tired than usual. He’ll never get used to waking up this early, that’s for sure, but it’s even worse when he’s been kept up all night from strange sounds coming through the walls — probably some neighbor dragging out the last of their weekend fun.
Felix goes through his morning routine robotically, avoiding looking at himself in the mirror while he brushes his teeth. For some reason, seeing his reflection only serves to trigger the existential crisis that’s become a daily occurrence at this point. It’s not even that his life is bad: he makes a decent living at his mind-numbing secretarial job, he has the required minimum of one friend, and he has some half-baked hobbies just to give him something to do. As sad as it is to say, his life is certainly the best it’s ever been, compared to what he’s been through before.
But if he’s being honest with himself, he’s just going through the motions, and he can’t make the cycle stop because he wouldn’t even begin to know how. He feels like there's so much life inside of him, and he has no idea how to live it. That’s the brutal truth, and he simply tries to accept it because no amount of misery has ever given him enough of a push to actually change anything. Life is easier on standby, Felix has decided, since suicide is too much effort.
The dull, repetitive routine of Felix’s life is so painfully regular that even the smallest of changes is enough to stimulate his brain. Today, something different happens before Felix’s day even really starts: as he waits for the elevator in the dingy hallway of his apartment building, the door across from his own opens and a stranger walks out.
Felix isn’t quite sure who even lives there — a balding old man, maybe, that he might have seen on the balcony smoking a cigarette in an ill-fitting wifebeater? Either way, it’s definitely not the tall, slim young man who slinks out of the door now, shutting it almost silently behind him. He has the kind of face Felix only sees in magazines, perfect features on a flawless canvas, and his chin-length hair is a garish shade of bright red. He’s wearing a long black coat that swishes around his feet when he walks over to stand next to Felix.
“Morning,” the man says cheerily, and it takes Felix’s brain a second to come up with the appropriate response.
“Good morning,” he returns after a few seconds of silence, and the stranger gives him a funny sideways glance. The elevator arrives shortly afterwards and they step into it silently; the small, cramped space forces them to stand directly opposite one another, and Felix looks straight down at his feet. There’s a strange smell permeating the elevator, but surely it can’t be this alluring stranger — he looks like he smells of fragrant vanilla and delicate roses, and the smell filling the elevator is dark and metallic, almost like how Felix’s hands smell after he handles the rusty keys at the post office.
The man shifts on his feet, his coat falling open, and Felix’s eyes automatically glance up to track the movement. He can’t help the visceral gasp that escapes him when he sees the plain white shirt the stranger is wearing underneath: it’s soaked in what really looks like blood, brownish and dried in some areas and fresh and crimson in others. It’s especially gory-looking in contrast to the clean, milky skin that the t-shirt exposes.
“Oh my god, are you alright?” Felix exclaims. The stranger looks down, like he’s forgotten what he looks like.
“Oh, this? Don’t worry, sugar.” The stranger leans in and winks conspiratorially. “It’s not mine.”
Felix’s heart stops in his chest for a second, both because of the stranger’s words and his sudden proximity. Felix thinks he must be making a (pretty terrible) joke, but the man’s eyes are intense and focused on him. Felix just stares back, unable to look away, and it’s completely silent except for the cheery ding! with every floor they pass.
Right before they reach the ground floor, the man leans back against the wall again and grins at Felix. “Kidding. It’s hair dye.”
He points at his tomato-colored head, and Felix sags with relief. “Ah,” he says, and the man snickers.
Ground floor! announces the automated voice, and the elevator door creaks open. The man leaves without another word, strolling out with his hands in his pockets and an eerie whistle on his lips. Felix isn’t even aware that he’s just standing there staring until the elevator announces, going up!, and he has to leap out at the last second before he’s late to work — any later than usual, that is.
He’s been slacking off recently and there’s no way his boss isn’t noticing, but he just can’t bring himself to take the job any more seriously than he does. A fucking monkey could be trained to do it, honestly, and it feels like a waste of Felix’s time and energy. But on the other hand, what else is he supposed to do? He’s not good enough at anything. He’s not passionate enough about anything. He wants to have hopes and dreams and goals, but he simply doesn’t. At the end of the day, no matter how much he hates the job, he knows that he’s never gonna end up anywhere other than behind a desk.
On that train of thought, Felix walks into work in a particularly gloomy mood, glad as always for the tiny single cubicles they stuff them in. It’s probably about seven different kinds of workers’ rights violations, but it means that other than dealing with calls or emails, he doesn’t have to see or speak to a single person. Besides, he has the phone script and the email template memorized backwards at this point, so he’s able to drone through the job without really paying attention.
Today, he can’t keep his thoughts off of the mysterious stranger from this morning, whom he’s already taken to calling ‘Red’ in his head. Felix keeps replaying the interaction over and over in his mind, cringing at his own awkwardness and lack of social skills. He mostly thinks about his face, though. It’s just so perfect, so awfully handsome, and Felix doesn’t meet cute guys (or anyone new, for that matter) very often. He finds himself wondering why Red was there in the first place — what would someone like him be doing in Felix’s neighbor’s apartment? Why was he there, and why did he leave so early, alone? And another thought that Felix refuses to let himself dwell on too much: would he be back? Would Felix maybe get to see him again?
Work flies by surprisingly, now that he has something actually interesting to think about all day, and he gets a call from his friend Chan half an hour before his shift ends. They’re not supposed to be on their phones at all, but Felix couldn’t care less. He answers the call with their usual “G’day!”
“Hey, Felix,” Chan says brightly. Chan is the only person that Felix feels even somewhat comfortable being around, the only person on this earth he can truly call his friend. Chan is kind and funny and personable, the kind of guy who could spark up a conversation with a brick wall, and Felix has no idea why Chan even bothers with him. Pity, probably.
“What’s up?” Felix says, clicking his pen.
“I was wondering if you want a ride home from work. I’ll be in the area soon, and you’re off at 5, yeah?”
“Yeah! That would be perfect, Chan,” Felix says. It’s not so bad being a loser with no driver’s license when you have a best friend who’s also your personal chauffeur.
“Alright, see ya then,” Chan says before hanging up. Felix spins around idly in his office chair, eyeing the clock with every spin around. Now it feels like time is dragging, almost taunting him, withholding him from the one joyous moment of his day before he goes back to his drab, boring life in his drab, boring apartment.
As soon as the second hand passes 12, Felix is out of there like a dart. He laughs out loud when he sees the cop car pulling up to the sidewalk, flashing its lights merrily. Chan is really not one for being inconspicuous, and he’ll take any excuse to take the work car out for a drive. Felix jogs up and gets into the passenger seat, hoping none of his coworkers are watching and thinking he’s getting arrested or something.
“Hey, Chan. Thanks for picking me up,” Felix says, feeling himself smile unconsciously just at the sight of Chan, looking both dorky and adorable as always in his uniform and badge.
“Nah, it’s no problem,” Chan says, pulling back onto the road and beginning the drive. “It was on the way.”
“Where are you heading?” Felix asks, and Chan looks over somewhat shiftily.
“Your apartment building, actually.”
Felix frowns. “How come?”
Chan looks at him again and then lowers his voice conspiratorially, as if someone’s listening in on them. “The news hasn’t really broken yet, but … someone died. Someone was murdered, actually, one of the people living on your floor… I wanted to come get you and let you know beforehand, so you didn’t freak out when you saw cops and medics everywhere.”
“Wh— someone was murdered? On my floor?” Felix says weakly, his mouth suddenly going very dry. It’s hair dye…
Chan nods gravely. “They still need to do a full autopsy, but it probably happened during the night.”
“Oh my god,” Felix whispers, gazing off into nowhere. “Those sounds— there were these weird sounds all night, I couldn’t sleep, oh my god …”
“Really?” Chan says, perking up with interest. “What kind of sounds?”
Felix shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “Just, I don’t know… thumping? Like furniture moving, maybe? I kept going in and out of sleep, so I don’t really know…”
Chan clicks his tongue. “That’s the most useful info we have so far, since your landlord’s too cheap for CCTV. Did you see anything? Yesterday night, or maybe this morning?”
Felix feels like his heart is beating in his throat, making him horribly nauseous, although the icy pit in his stomach isn’t helping either. He thinks he must be in shock, and his thoughts are flitting a hundred miles an hour — red hair, sharp catlike eyes, red red stains on his shirt, red tinted lips curling up in a smile saying, it’s not mine…
“No,” Felix says, the word barely slipping out of him. He feels guilty for lying to Chan, but he’s already far too fucking involved in this for his own liking, and since there’s no CCTV to prove otherwise, why would he admit that he almost certainly saw the suspect they’re looking for? Chan’s told him enough about the job to know what would come next: they’d take him to the station, make him talk to a sketch artist, grill him for hours, and then he’d be at their beck and call if they needed him to pick someone out of a lineup… Just the thought of all that hassle is making his stomach turn. And what if Red found out he snitched, somehow? He knows where Felix lives— oh fuck, he knows where Felix lives.
“Hey, Lix, it’s okay,” Chan says soothingly, misinterpreting Felix’s rising panic. “You’re safe, I got you.”
“Who was it?” Felix says past the lump in his throat. “Who died?”
“I don’t think you would’ve known him,” Chan says. “We actually don’t have an ID yet, we’re hoping the coroners can help with that. And that house, my god— from what my team’s telling me, it’s a real hoarder situation. Seems like the guy never went outside. And there are all these tapes, apparently, old VCR tapes with stuff on them that would’ve had him on death row if he was still alive. Makes sense why there was no identifying information in the entire house, if that’s the kind of shit he was keeping in there.”
“Fucking hell,” is all Felix can say.
“Right?” Chan shakes his head. “Only person who might be worse than him is whoever did this to him. Apparently it’s a real bloodbath.”
Felix thinks about the state of Red’s shirt, the massive stains, the different colors, the dry and fresh blood, because now he knows it was definitely blood— please don’t let me throw up in a cop car, Felix prays silently to any deity who’s listening.
Chan must pick up on Felix’s discomfort because he says gently, “sorry, I guess I’m a bit too used to talking about this kinda stuff. But I don’t want you to worry, Lix. Everything about it screams a random killing, probably a drug deal gone wrong, if his bathroom cabinet is anything to go by. You’re totally safe, I promise. Although I really wish you would move out of that shithole for various other reasons…”
Felix forces out a weak laugh. “Guess I’ll start saving up,” he said, only half-joking. Of course he knows his building is a dump, but he’s never cared enough to move. Now, though, now that a demented killer knows exactly where he lives…
He shakes the thought out of his head forcefully. He’ll be fine. Like Chan said, it was random, there’s no CCTV, nothing to link Felix to him. Besides, what idiot would come back to the scene of his crime? I’m safe, Felix repeats firmly to himself, until he thinks he almost believes it.
The ride up to Felix’s floor passes in silence, and the whole time Felix is freaking out in his head. Does it still smell like blood in here? No, it’s been hours, I must be imagining it. But still… that smell… can Chan smell it too? Can he smell it on me? Does he know—
Felix’s thoughts are stopped short when the elevator door opens and he’s immediately thrown into the midst of a flurried crowd. Cops, paramedics, detectives, sleazebag journalists; they’re all cramped in his hallway, a steady flow of people going in and out of that apartment. The door is wide open, but Felix averts his gaze and lets Chan herd him safely into his own apartment. He doesn’t want to see anything that might give him nightmares. He already has more than enough of those.
“I gotta go back out there,” Chan says apologetically, hovering in the doorway. “You want me to stop by afterwards, check up on you?”
Felix wants nothing more than Chan’s company, but he’s too anxious to pretend to be okay right now, so he says, “nah, I’ll be fine. I’m probably just gonna shower and head to bed. You know, long day at work.”
Chan looks slightly unconvinced, but nods anyway. “Goodnight, then. And don’t forget to lock your doors, yeah?”
He says this last part jokingly, but after he leaves and shuts the door behind him, Felix triple checks that he slams the deadbolt firmly in place.
Sometimes, when Felix is having irrational fears, he tries to literally talk himself out of it. For the rest of the night, while he showers, pees, cooks, eats, he’s repeating I’m safe like a mantra. It’s not really an irrational fear at all, to be scared of a murderer who knows where you live, but he firmly pushes that thought away the same way he would with his usual intrusive thoughts. The repetitive, calming chant, along with a couple melatonin gummies, sufficiently relaxes him enough to actually go to sleep at a reasonable hour.
As it turns out, this was the one time in his life he should have listened to the paranoia.
Something wakes Felix in the middle of the night, a sound so small and insignificant that it’s already quiet again by the time he blinks his eyes open. On any other night, he would roll over and slip back into sleep, but the last time he ignored noises in the night…
Felix sits up fast, suddenly awake and with an odd feeling of dread. When he looks over at the foot of his bed and sees the figure sitting there, the slim black coat and the curtains of red hair, he actually thinks he’s still dreaming. But when he closes his eyes and counts backwards from 10 and opens them again, he is still there, watching Felix.
Terror washes over Felix, and he can feel the scream building inside his chest, but then Red brings one finger to his lips in a silencing gesture, and Felix freezes. He feels like prey right in the path of a predator; with those dark eyes looking right at him, he suddenly can’t make a single noise.
“Don’t scream,” Red says quietly. “I won’t hurt you. If you cooperate.”
Cooperate?! Felix’s mind scrambles, trying to think of what he could mean.
“What’s your name?” Red inquires. Felix just shakes his head minutely, still unable to speak and also unwilling to answer.
Red rolls his eyes. “Whatever, I already know. My name is Hyunjin, by the way. It’s nice to meet you again, Felix.”
Felix feels the breath leave his body. “How—”
“You take a long path to work, you know,” Hyunjin interrupts him. “You could easily switch buses and save yourself a good 10 minutes.” Seeing the look on Felix’s face, he says, “Yeah, I followed you to work. And I saw you leave with your cop buddy, too.”
It’s solely self-preservation that makes Felix blurt out, “I didn’t tell them anything! I said I didn’t see anyone, didn’t see anything, a-and there’s no cameras. I didn’t say a thing, I swear!”
Hyunjin just stares levelly into Felix’s eyes, which are quickly filling with tears. After a few sickening moments, he concludes, “Alright, I believe you. But that’s not really why I’m here.”
“Why?” Felix whispers.
Hyunjin studies his fingernails for a moment, looking deep in thought. “Listen, it’s not some kind of hero complex bullshit. I don’t think I’m less bad for only killing the scum of the earth. I enjoy the act of killing, and I don’t particularly care who it is. It’s just pure logic: if I’m going to kill someone anyway, why not someone whose death will be a net positive to the world? And it’s always so easy, too, especially with the pervs. They’re so eager to find someone who’s into the same freak shit they are, they literally invite you right in. That old man across the hall was a particularly nasty one— some of the things he said he wanted to do to me, goodness! You would blush if I told you. Well, I'll tell you something, he didn’t seem to like it so much when I did it to him.”
Hyunjin leans forward. “And you know what else?”
“Wh-what?” Felix stammers. He has absolutely no fucking idea how this is relevant to Hyunjin being in his house, but he’s not about to interrupt a madman.
“These people don’t have families. They don’t have friends. They’re the castoffs of society, the ones who live around the edges. The only people who are required to give a shit about them are the poor pigs who get tasked to solve their murders. But when they start looking into the so-called victim, when they uncover what I already knew about them, they get to thinking— and they’d never admit this— but they get to thinking, the fucker’s better off dead. And just like that … the case goes cold.”
Hyunjin leans back again, looking satisfied with himself. “Killing them is easy enough, sure. Finding them, though, that’s harder than you’d think. A lot of the worst ones are already locked up or awaiting trial, or on parole or house arrest, on watch 24/7. I’m looking for the real slimy ones, the ones who fly under the radar, try and go off the grid. I’ll give it to them, they’re good at it, too. Some of them are impossible to find. But you know what even the biggest, baddest bad guy gets? Do you know, Felix?”
“N-No?”
Hyunjin smiles, and looks fucking cherubic, like he hasn’t just been ranting about murder. “Mail,” Hyunjin says, whispering it for effect. “No matter how deep they go down the dark web, no matter how many aliases and firewalls and VPNs they hide behind, when they buy the illegal shit they do, they still have to send it somewhere. They still have to put their legal name on the billing address. And that, Felix, is where you come in.”
Comprehension dawns on Felix, and he shakes his head rigorously. “No. No! I can’t help you k— I can’t help you, okay? I already lied to the cops for you. Please, just leave, and I’ll pretend I never saw you.”
Mild irritation takes over Hyunjin’s eerily calm features. “Felix. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. You are going to help me, because if you don’t, I’ll just kill you. Like I said, I’m not picky.”
Felix’s heart squeezes painfully. “Th-They’ll find you. Chan will find you!”
“Chan? Is that your cop boyfriend?” Hyunjin mocks, his expression turning cruel. “He’ll do no such thing. See, I got bored waiting for you at work and I did some digging. You’re a ghost, aren’t you? Couldn’t find anything worth a damn. You live here alone, and you have no family, do you? Do you even have friends other than Chan? Anyone who’ll care enough to avenge your murder? And that’s if they even realize it’s a murder. I’m very good at staging accidents.”
The tears have long since spilled past Felix’s eyes, and he’s too terrified to be embarrassed at how he’s openly blubbering. “No, please, just leave me alone, I can’t do it!”
“You can and you will,” Hyunjin hisses, and the sudden shift in his tone makes Felix cower. “I’m not fucking repeating myself again. Here.” Hyunjin digs a crumpled piece of paper from his coat pocket, tosses it across the bed. Felix’s hands are shaking so badly that it takes him four tries to unfold the note, which is a list of names in different languages.
“It’s all the same guy,” Hyunjin explains. “I’ve been trying to get him for a while now, but he has about fifty fucking personas. Anyway. Run them all through the system and find me an address, will you?”
Felix wants to cry out, wants to scream and refuse and spit in Hyunjin’s face, but the threat in his voice definitely wasn’t empty. Felix can tell that any further resistance is going to get him into trouble, so he just asks shakily, “what if I still can’t find him?”
“Then I’ll give you another one to try,” Hyunjin says with a shrug. “But if you do find him, and you tell me you don’t… I’ll know you’re lying. I’ll know, and I’ll make you regret it.”
Felix bites back an ugly sob, unable to wrap his head around what’s happening.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night,” Hyunjin says. “Don’t wait up, I’ll let myself in.”
He gets up and walks across the room, and shit, now Felix sees how he got in: the small door leading from his bedroom out onto the cramped balcony is wide open, curtains billowing in the night breeze. Hyunjin floats through them like a specter, and then … nothing.
Felix waits for a few long, silent moments before forcing himself up on wobbly legs to go look. Hyunjin’s gone, and even when Felix looks over the railing and down the fire escape, he’s nowhere to be seen. It’s like he’s disappeared.
Felix is more than ready to believe it was just a bad dream — a bad, very realistic dream that his stressed-out brain produced based on the events of that day. But when he collapses back onto his bed, that piece of paper is still sitting there, real as ever. It haunts him all night, keeps him up tossing and turning and reading it till his eyes sting, until his brain can recite the list backwards and forwards.
This is real. He has to go in to work tomorrow — today, fuck, it’s almost dawn already — and find an address he can give Hyunjin. An act that he knows will end in someone’s death. An act that, if defied, will end in his own death.
It’s funny how, despite Felix’s general apathy towards life, he can’t even consider the latter option. Call it cowardice, call it survival instinct, but whatever it is, it won’t let Felix give himself up that easily. A small part of him logically whispers that he has Hyunjin’s DNA on the paper, that he can hand it in to Chan and confess what he knows and hope they find Hyunjin and lock him up. But if they don’t, where does that leave him? At best, he’s in hot water for lying to the cops in the first place, and at worst… he shudders all over. He doesn’t know exactly what Hyunjin plans on doing to him, and he doesn’t even want to imagine it.
Felix finds himself staring listlessly in the mirror the next morning, going automatically through the motions of his morning routine. His reflection stares right back, eyes dark and large, and it passes no judgment on him.
Do what you have to do to stay alive, it whispers to him, and Felix nods.
The next night finds Felix in a very similar position: awake, anxious, and clutching that goddamn piece of paper. He knows Hyunjin told him not to wait up, and he would much rather be sleeping, but the nerves are making it physically impossible. He’s been shaking practically the whole day, since the second he walked into work. He was certain that any minute someone would read his mind or realize what he’s doing, but of course nothing happened. He knows all too well that nobody’s paying attention to them, the little worker ants in their tiny offices. He’s all alone, and nobody is watching.
That’s the only thing that actually gives him the courage to go ahead and do it. Midway through his shift, when everyone’s on lunch break and there’s a lull in activity, he opens up the directory for the postal service. The paper is in his pocket, although he doesn’t really need it. He types all the names from memory, in order, and each one comes up blank … until the penultimate name, the very second to last, when his guard had almost gone completely down. Then, it pinged with a result, only a few dozen miles away.
Felix’s hand shakes as he unwraps the paper and writes the address down on the back, the letters coming out wobbly. He got a match, and he can’t lie to Hyunjin, so he has no choice. He does as he’s told, slips the paper into his pocket again, and continues his mindless work. He even stays overtime, wanting to avoid his apartment for as long as possible, but at some point the security guard has to lock up and Felix has to go home.
And so here he is now, waiting in agonizing suspense, hypnotizing himself with the hands on his clock. It’s a black cat, hanging right above his bed, and the eyes flick creepily from side to side every second, surveying everything. Felix’s fingernails are bitten down to stubs, and still he chews frantically at the spongy nail beds, ignoring his body’s pleas to stop the pain.
He really, really wishes he could sleep, because he’s sure that waking up to find Hyunjin in his room would be less terrifying than this waiting. Every sound from outside, every creak, every hushed voice, every wind-whisper has him on high alert. His neighbors from downstairs even go out on the fire escape a few times to smoke, and it scares the shit out of Felix every single time. By the time he actually hears the light footsteps tapping up the stairs and watches his balcony door swing open, he’s about ready to piss himself.
“You’re up,” Hyunjin says by way of greeting, taking his spot at the edge of Felix’s bed again. Felix curls into himself subconsciously, glad that he’s under the covers.
“Here,” Felix says, passing the paper to Hyunjin. When their fingers touch, Hyunjin’s are warm and soft. Impossibly soft for someone who could be capable of — what did Chan call it? — a bloodbath.
Hyunjin flips it over to see the address, and then looks up at Felix. “Huh. You did it,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards.
Felix folds his arms across his chest. “You made it pretty clear that I had no choice.”
“Yeah, I know, I’m just… impressed, I suppose,” Hyunjin says, tilting his head. “You’re not really one to fight back, are you? You just go ahead and do what you’re told. I like that.”
Felix avoids Hyunjin’s gaze, unsure what to say. He should be appalled, and on some level he is, but on a deeper, more pathetic level, he needs the praise more than even he knows. Besides, it affirms his uneasy conscience; this was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?
“So you won’t hurt me?” Felix asks cautiously.
“Why would I do that?” Hyunjin asks back. “You held up your end.”
“But…” Felix realizes he should just shut up and be grateful, but he can’t help but continue. “But you said you liked killing people, right? So why wouldn’t you k-kill me right now? If you really think nobody would find out …”
Hyunjin looks almost amused. “It's not a compulsion, Felix. It's not some urge I can't control. I do like killing people, like I told you, and that's why I do it."
“But why do you like it?” Felix finds himself asking, and he really should shut up now, but the question just blurts out of him. Hyunjin pauses and looks at him, eyebrows raised slightly, like nobody’s ever asked him that. And realistically, it’s unlikely that anyone ever has. Am I the only living person who knows what he does? Felix wonders, shivering at the thought.
“Why?” Hyunjin echoes, looking at the ceiling. “Hmm… I think it’s more like… I just don’t like anything else as much- or at all. Imagine living in the backseat of your own life, watching everything happen on a screen, and it’s all greyscale and grainy and it’s okay, really, it’s fine, but it’s nothing special. You’re always bored, and you’d rather turn it off, but you have to keep going to keep everyone else happy. And then something happens, and just for a second— one long, beautiful second, you’re seeing in full color, full resolution, and for the first time you feel like you’re alive and not just living. You step right into the screen.”
Hyunjin pauses, and Felix realizes he’s been leaning forward unconsciously while Hyunjin speaks, suddenly enraptured. His heart is pounding unevenly and he feels a bit dizzy because fuck, Hyunjin just described his life. Bleak and gray and barely in control of it. The backseat of your own life. It’s so accurate he might cry. Up until the part about everything coming into color, though. That… Felix has definitely never felt.
“Wouldn’t you do anything to get that feeling back?” Hyunjin implores, his pupils wide and black.
Felix nods. It’s almost imperceptible, but Hyunjin picks up on it and keeps going.
“It’s not just the feeling, though,” he says, looking through his lashes like he’s admitting a secret. “It’s just so … vivid, so incredible. It’s like art. It is art. It’s the canvas and the paint and the instruments. Have you ever felt a heartbeat? Felt it, right in your palm? It’s magical. It’s…” Hyunjin shakes his head, like he’s snapping himself out of a trance. “It’s the most beautiful thing there is, Felix, and that’s why I do it.”
“Oh,” is all Felix can say, more of a sound than a word. He’s been locked in Hyunjin’s gaze this whole time, and now Hyunjin looks away, up at the clock, and Felix lets out the breath that was trapped in his lungs.
“And you’re going to keep helping me,” Hyunjin says, with a tone of finality. Felix’s stomach drops. He can’t say he didn’t expect this as an outcome, but still. There was still the faintest hope that Hyunjin would consider them even and leave him alone.
But now… if he allows himself to imagine that, really imagine that, he finds himself panicking. It feels like Hyunjin has knocked everything off balance and then thrown him some kind of fucked-up lifeline, a sudden chance to pull him out of the sea of banal everyday life that he’s been drowning in for so long.
It’s a lifeline straight to hell, that’s for sure, but hell can’t be worse than purgatory, right?
“Okay,” Felix says, trying to make his voice sound stronger than it is. “I’ll help you. If you promise you won’t kill me.”
Hyunjin smiles, and it’s like the sun. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”