#I STILL CAN'T FULLY BELIEVE YOU'D ALLOW ME SUCH AN IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE FOR CHULSOO

[mythvoiced]

@jeoseungsaja | the great beta editor pilgrimage

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How much longer can he resist, how much longer can he deny before the stranger's words become reality?

There's a ringing in his ears that isn't even truly there. It's... ghost-like, it's as though he's imagining it solely because he doesn't know how else he should be able to describe what's been stomping around in his mind.

Addressing the accident as a whole was a feat. He doesn't want to think about the helplessness he'd felt, the utter shame that reached him after whenever he thought on the sobbing that had burst through and out of him as if intent on lacerating his throat.

He doesn't want to think about the crying and the pleading and the way his heart beat fast enough it felt as though his chest was caving in, if it hadn't actually been. The shape of his leg and the white pain in it, the shrieking in his shoulder, the blood that belonged some to him, some to someone else.

He doesn't want to think about it because he'd rather it turn into as distant a memory as the faint whispering he sometimes tricks himself into believing had been there as well.

But if he heeds the stranger's words - and they sound like the warning he's been pushing away for so long, as if death itself had shown and is trying to help him look into the headlights of the truck speeding his way - then how much more can he do and for how much longer can he play this game before the noose around his neck tightens more than he can loosen it?

Before he finally slips?

Chul-soo presses his palms to his ears and shuts his eyes tight.

The other's features swim plastered onto the inside of his eyelids. The pale skin and the intrusive stare, the jolt away from his hand, as if he was a ghost Chul-soo wasn't allowed to touch, as if an hallucination that doesn't want him to know he isn't actually there.

And next to his unforgiving features, he sees the glow of unkempt black hair under moonlight and the vicious grip of ancient claws sticking into his flesh, unearthing his insides to plant him into soil that isn't his, that isn't him, that isn't him.

He doesn't understand that last part.

A name? A soul? A who?

"I don't know what to do," he shatters into a plea, his hands ripping from his ears to reach for the man's front instead, his eyes blown wide with the tears he's yet to shed from that rainy day.

He's let them slip onto the already wet street and refused to spill them ever since. And now they collect at the corners of his eyes and he pleas, like he's vowed to never do.

"I don't know what to do, what the fuck am I supposed to do-!?"