Super Junior {Hankyung/Heechul ; Timeless (1/5)}
Title: Timeless (1/5)
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !future)
Pairing: Hankyung/Heechul
Word count: 2,965
Rating: R
Summary: Heechul has just had the worst day ever, in the world. Honestly, he doesn't think that it could possibly get worse than this. That, however, is something that he'll come to regret articulating when he ends up a long way from home, in a world where life is a fight for survival.
A/N: I've been writing this since early August, dead. It's finished! Finally finished! I finally stuck to my word and wrote the whole thing before posting \o/ I think I've been writing this for so long that it's kind of incoherent and doesn't make sense and, well, crap :| ~whatever whatever~ while the title of this is obviously the same as the Zhang Li Yin song, the song had no bearing in the writing of this fic :| it just...fits. as a title. based on the plot. YES.
The background to this story: I was kind of Hanchul-blocked, trying desperately to come up with something new that I could write but just couldn't. I whined at civilized_era for a while until I'd finally fleshed out the vague idea that I had. What would I do without people to discuss ideas with, honestly, I'd never manage to write anything at all. But yes~ thank you, Jeny, for helping me with this ♥
Timeless (1/5)
Oh when you tell me you love me
When you tell me thousands and millions of times
Even when my heart sets on fire, my dry lips wear out
Even when I’m born again, it’s still only you
(Still Still) Even as time goes by
It's You by Super Junior
When people said that they'd had the worst day ever, Heechul had always sort of thought that they were exaggerating. He'd never really believed them when they'd claimed so. Bad days were just that: bad days. Everyone had them. There was no degree to them, no level of bad-worse-worst. A bad day was as bad as it could get.
Oh, he was wrong.
He'd just had the worst bad day ever in the history of the world, the universe, ever. His worst day ever would go down in the history books. His was the one to be compared to, everyone would say, "Yeah, but it could be worse: I could have had Heechul's worst day." It could be worse for them. They, too, could have woken up an hour late because their alarm broke in the night. Then there had been nothing to wear because he'd forgotten to wash most of his stuff, so he was wearing an old shirt that was small from being washed too much and a pair of beige slacks that he'd probably bought while high/received as a present from Siwon. He'd had to skip breakfast. He'd arrived half an hour late for his job as an entertainment reviewer for a newspaper, which had meant a run in with his boss, a dickhead with a degree in Business Management and who seemed to think that "thinking outside the box" was original and clever. Why were you late to work, Heechul-shi? Didn't you think outside the fucking box?
Then Donghae cancelled on him for lunch in order to meet up with his new boyfriend, Kibum, and Heechul wouldn't have minded much, except everyone else then was unable to turn up, even Siwon, who always made time for Heechul if he asked, so he'd been forced to eat lunch in the cafeteria by himself like a fucking loser, before going back up to work and finding out that all of his notes for the film he watched yesterday had been swept into the bin by one of the cleaning ladies, and were already in the large bins around the back of the building, where he was unble to retrieve them from. He had to write the thing from memory, and then got yelled at by his boss again for turning in shoddy work.
He'd clung onto the knowledge that he had a date with Hwanghi, his boyfriend of the past year and a half, that night to get him through. So what if his friends didn't really like Hwanghi because he was a player for a local football club and they thought he was a bit full of himself? Men like Hwanghi were hard to come by: handsome, willing to take Heechul to expensive restaurants, and gay to boot? Heechul was clinging to him as hard as he could.
Well, he was, right until Hwanghi dumped him.
He'd been so stunned that he hadn't even been able to come back when Hwanghi said, "I just don't think we work together. I mean, I'm a rising star and you're just a journalist. I need to mix with people of my own standard, you know? You would just drag me back."
Two hours later, sitting on his bed, kind of smashed, what he'd just been told suddenly hit. "What the fuck, I'm not just any old journalist," he said, out loud, risking insanity. "I'm the fucking reviewer for Seoul Times, the best selling tabloid in the whole of Korea. I know everybody who is fucking anybody. Drag you back, my ass. Fuck you, you son of a motherfucking cunt bitch."
Just before he buried his head under his covers and cried tears of frustration, despair, but mostly just anger, he said, "My life could not get any worse."
He woke up on the ground.
At first he just thought that he'd fallen out of bed, but when he opened his eyes he realised that he was not in his bedroom any more, not unless someone came into his room in the middle of the night and decorated it with half-built buildings and a liberal amount of red dust, which coated everything that he could see. He sat up, shielding his eyes; although the sun was low in the sky, it was still bright and hot. It couldn't be much past dawn.
Was this a prank? Had someone moved him in the night? He didn't remember there being a wasteland like this anywhere around Seoul. "Hey!" he shouted, angrily. Donghae would have thought this would be a funny idea, though Kyuhyun probably had something to do with it too, the brat. They were probably hiding in one of the crumbling buildings around him. "Donghae! This isn't fucking funny!"
Nothing. No one answered, and the silence was beginning to creep him out. He realised, for the first time, that there was no bird call. The wind suddenly whistled through the window frames of a house behind him, making him jump six feet in the air. Wasn't this the set for some horror film he'd seen? "Donghae?"
No answer again. God, when Heechul got his hands on them. He stood up, doing his best to sweep the dust from his clothes, and then he froze. He wasn't wearing the tank top and pyjama bottoms he'd gone to bed in. Someone had dressed him in a pale pink t-shirt and his grey jeans, except that was impossible. His grey jeans needed a shoehorn to get into, no one could have dressed him in them without him waking up and demanding to know what the fuck was going on. Did they drug him? Could he claim rape when he got back from wherever he was? What the fuck was going on?
Surely, if he started walking, he'd come across someone somewhere, hopefully someone who could help him get back to Seoul. Maybe this really was a horror movie set and that would mean civilization was near. He picked a direction and started to walk; there must be a road to stumble upon.
The sun got higher in the sky, and although he didn't think it possible, the air around him got hotter. Now he knew why the ground looked scorched. He continued on, determined, vowing to get back at whoever abandoned him in this place. Very soon, he stoped bitching out loud. It was making his mouth dry, and he was thirsty. After all, he gotten drunk the night before. He'd just been dumped. The thought made him scowl and plod on. He wanted to punch Hwanghi in the face, and to do that, he needed to get back home.
Very soon, he thought that it was midday. He was thirsty and hungry, and once the sun began to get high in the sky, he began to feel too hot to be able to go on. For a moment, he entertained thoughts of just collapsing onto the ground. Then his skin started to blister.
Pinpricks of pain shot over any skin that was exposed before it suddenly erupted into burning. He yelled out, looked around for the cause, and then dived away into a building. The shadows were short but he just about to managed to get out of the sun. There he sat, in shock, staring at the skin on his hands and arms; it was pink, slightly shiny, like healing sunburn, and yes, he'd been in the sun all day, but he'd never known sunburn to feel like that. He shivered suddenly, skin hot but cold on the inside. Where the fuck was he?
He didn't know how long he waited there, but the shadows were much longer before he ventured out again. It was definitely cooling down and as he walked he managed to ignore the pain of his burnt skin. Even though the sun was still there, the burns didn't appear to get any worse.
The houses started to get closer together now. Perhaps it was a town, once, and he'd getting closer to the center of it. Out of curiousity, he touched the brickwork of a nearby building, one which still had the front wall intact, though the wood of the doors and windows had rotted away. It looked like it had once been a family house. The brick was warm, and fragile, breaking away like sand as he rubbed his fingers lightly across the surface. When he pulled his hand away, his fingers were covered in red dust. He sighed and wiped it on his jeans, then regretted it as all that did was make his jeans dirty.
He'd come across no one. A road would be impossible to find if this dust kept up. His skin burnt, his hair was uncombed and probably streaked with red, his clothes were covered in the stuff and he was hungry, tired and thirsty. It was probably just as well that he'd come across no one because chances were, he'd bite their head off. Miserable, he found a building that came complete with a roof and decided to put up camp for the night. Although he searched the whole building -- even risking the second floor, although the stairs seemed like they could collapse at any moment -- all he found was a thin covering that he wrapped around his shoulders. Still no food or water. He'd have to find at least the latter tomorrow. Much as he had hated the day -- and the day before hadn't been much better, that worst day of his life -- he still didn't want to die. He had a lot of revenge to exact.
He watched from his shelter as the sun went down, heaving a sigh of relief as the heat finally left the air, his burnt skin finally cooling. Then he shivered and pulled the blanket closer around him. Without the sun, the world was suddenly freezing. He huddled down in the corner out of the wind that had been blowing all day, a wind which burnt when the sun was out and which froze his bones now that the sun was gone, arms wrapped around himself, trying to conserve as much heat as he could. Suddenly, he was too scared to go to sleep, for fear that he would never wake up, frozen in his unconcious state.
The second morning found him exhausted and weak. He struggled upright, because he knew that he couldn't stay where he was, otherwise he'd die, and he swayed on his feet for a moment or two before he felt like he could move. The blanket he kept, wrapped around himself as a vague form of protection against the sun. Then he began to walk.
He'd been walking for about an hour or so, although he kept having to stop and rest, and as he went he let his thoughts wander, because that was all he could do, with nothing stretching out in front, behind, to the sides. He wondered if his friends were missing him. He wouldn't have turned up for work the day before, surely alarm bells would have been ringing. Maybe someone then rang Hwanghi to see if he was with him, and the break-up would have come out. Maybe Siwon was pouting that he hadn't been told immediately, but while Heechul loved his best friend and all, even Siwon wouldn't have been able to find the bright spot in the day. Actually, he might have considered the break-up the bright spot. Siwon had been the one who had disliked Hwanghi the most: Siwon, who liked everyone, who managed to find something good in everyone. "He's not good for you, hyung," he'd always said, and at the time, Heechul had disagreed.
This was all Hwanghi's fault, he decided. He'd probably walked here in his sleep, got a bus or something, because he was traumatized. Today it would become apparent that he really was missing. Another day at work that he missed. Maybe they'd start searching the river. The thought of people thinking that he'd kill himself over Park Hwanghi made him feel sick, though he approved of the dramatic nature of it.
"I was never in love with him," he said, like not having his love was his punishment on Hwanghi, but the thing was, it was probably true. He'd liked him well enough, but Hwanghi sort of lacked a personality. He took Heechul nice places and looked good next to him and was above average in bed. Heechul lived in the city, he didn't believe in happily-ever-afters anymore. Heechul had never been in love with the people that he'd dated, because he understood how life worked. Find yourself someone worthwhile and just stick with him. Don't go looking for someone better, because then you'd just be disappointed later. If you get used to a good relationship, then you're just going to be hurt later on when the spark went. That's why he only stuck with people who didn't have that spark to begin with.
Siwon had always told him off for that, telling him that he deserved better, but Heechul often thought that Siwon lived in a fairy story, where being yourself meant that you found someone who complimented you and who accepted you. Siwon had the wife, kids, white picket fence to look forward to. Heechul just wanted someone he looked good with.
He was so occupied with his thoughts that he didn't notice the people up ahead until he could make out individual bodies. "Hey!" he shouted, and waved his arm in the air. "Finally! HEY!"
Their heads turned towards him, sharply. It was a group movement; five of them, all turning at the exact same moment. That was so creepy, he thought, and wished, suddenly, that he hadn't shouted. He stopped. None of the strangers make a sound, standing still. Then one of them made a noise and he was blinded for a second as the sunlight glared off the knives that they'd all just drawn from their sides. Then he could see, could see that they were running towards him.
He didn't think twice: he turned and fled, but he was weak and he was slower than them, not exactly used to having to run for things other than the train. He didn't know what the fuck was going on, but when he looked back he could see a strange expression on their faces, something not quite human. Bloodthirsty, almost. He didn't look back again, didn't get a chance, because when he looked back the first time, he tripped over something on the ground and went sprawling down on his front, twisting his ankle a little.
He lay, very still. There was no way he can outrun these people, not with hunger knawing away at him, with his mouth as dry as it is, not with exhaustion running through his bones and a twinge of pain in his ankle. He played dead in the hope that they left him alone, face pressed to the ground, trying to keep his breathing as shallow as possible. All he wanted to do was scream. Instead, he remained silent, and he heard them circle him, chattering amongst themselves in a language that he didn't recognise. It sounded a lot like Mandarin, only not quite, a slight difference in tone. He stayed still and quiet as he listened to one of them come near him -- and then screamed in pain as a knife cut through the skin on his back.
His pain caused them great amusement, their laughter like that of monkeys. He turned over, furious, but couldn't do anything other than support himself upright, too tired now to speak. He didn't know how deep the cut was, but it was painful enough to make his eyes water, could feel blood dripping down his back. Then the cause of the pain, the man holding a knife dripping with his blood, planted his foot on Heechul's chest and kicked him back to the ground.
He screamed again, terrible raw pain erupting all over him as the dust in the road got into the wound. That was pain beyond anything he'd ever felt before, and he broke his leg in three places when he was eighteen, so he knew about pain. The foot pressed down on his stomach, which forced more dust into his back. He was sobbing now, but managed to get his fingers around the man's ankle, pulling up the leg of his pants to dig his nails into his leg. The man just laughed and kicked his hands away before turning from him. He said something to the others, who laughed and nodded and then, as one, they turned and walked away, ignoring his cries.
He tried to move but couldn't, barely able to think, gaze fogging over. They'd left him there to die. Soon, the sun would reach the highest point and like the day before, he would burn, except this time, he wouldn't be able to move out of contact. He'd be stuck here. He would die. The thought terrified him beyond reason: he did not want to die, not here, not like this. He didn't even know where he was. No one would ever find him. His parents, Siwon, his other friends: they would never know what happened to him. He wasn't supposed to die like this! He was never supposed to die!
He began to yell for help, although it irritated his dry throat and he knew that it was useless. The only other people around were the ones who left him like this; they weren't going to be willing to help him. The sun was almost at the high point, he noted with dismay. Soon, he would die. The last thought he had before he blacked out was, "I'm too pretty to go like this."
He woke up to see a man holding a knife leaning over him.
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !future)
Pairing: Hankyung/Heechul
Word count: 2,965
Rating: R
Summary: Heechul has just had the worst day ever, in the world. Honestly, he doesn't think that it could possibly get worse than this. That, however, is something that he'll come to regret articulating when he ends up a long way from home, in a world where life is a fight for survival.
A/N: I've been writing this since early August, dead. It's finished! Finally finished! I finally stuck to my word and wrote the whole thing before posting \o/ I think I've been writing this for so long that it's kind of incoherent and doesn't make sense and, well, crap :| ~whatever whatever~ while the title of this is obviously the same as the Zhang Li Yin song, the song had no bearing in the writing of this fic :| it just...fits. as a title. based on the plot. YES.
The background to this story: I was kind of Hanchul-blocked, trying desperately to come up with something new that I could write but just couldn't. I whined at civilized_era for a while until I'd finally fleshed out the vague idea that I had. What would I do without people to discuss ideas with, honestly, I'd never manage to write anything at all. But yes~ thank you, Jeny, for helping me with this ♥
Timeless (1/5)
Oh when you tell me you love me
When you tell me thousands and millions of times
Even when my heart sets on fire, my dry lips wear out
Even when I’m born again, it’s still only you
(Still Still) Even as time goes by
It's You by Super Junior
When people said that they'd had the worst day ever, Heechul had always sort of thought that they were exaggerating. He'd never really believed them when they'd claimed so. Bad days were just that: bad days. Everyone had them. There was no degree to them, no level of bad-worse-worst. A bad day was as bad as it could get.
Oh, he was wrong.
He'd just had the worst bad day ever in the history of the world, the universe, ever. His worst day ever would go down in the history books. His was the one to be compared to, everyone would say, "Yeah, but it could be worse: I could have had Heechul's worst day." It could be worse for them. They, too, could have woken up an hour late because their alarm broke in the night. Then there had been nothing to wear because he'd forgotten to wash most of his stuff, so he was wearing an old shirt that was small from being washed too much and a pair of beige slacks that he'd probably bought while high/received as a present from Siwon. He'd had to skip breakfast. He'd arrived half an hour late for his job as an entertainment reviewer for a newspaper, which had meant a run in with his boss, a dickhead with a degree in Business Management and who seemed to think that "thinking outside the box" was original and clever. Why were you late to work, Heechul-shi? Didn't you think outside the fucking box?
Then Donghae cancelled on him for lunch in order to meet up with his new boyfriend, Kibum, and Heechul wouldn't have minded much, except everyone else then was unable to turn up, even Siwon, who always made time for Heechul if he asked, so he'd been forced to eat lunch in the cafeteria by himself like a fucking loser, before going back up to work and finding out that all of his notes for the film he watched yesterday had been swept into the bin by one of the cleaning ladies, and were already in the large bins around the back of the building, where he was unble to retrieve them from. He had to write the thing from memory, and then got yelled at by his boss again for turning in shoddy work.
He'd clung onto the knowledge that he had a date with Hwanghi, his boyfriend of the past year and a half, that night to get him through. So what if his friends didn't really like Hwanghi because he was a player for a local football club and they thought he was a bit full of himself? Men like Hwanghi were hard to come by: handsome, willing to take Heechul to expensive restaurants, and gay to boot? Heechul was clinging to him as hard as he could.
Well, he was, right until Hwanghi dumped him.
He'd been so stunned that he hadn't even been able to come back when Hwanghi said, "I just don't think we work together. I mean, I'm a rising star and you're just a journalist. I need to mix with people of my own standard, you know? You would just drag me back."
Two hours later, sitting on his bed, kind of smashed, what he'd just been told suddenly hit. "What the fuck, I'm not just any old journalist," he said, out loud, risking insanity. "I'm the fucking reviewer for Seoul Times, the best selling tabloid in the whole of Korea. I know everybody who is fucking anybody. Drag you back, my ass. Fuck you, you son of a motherfucking cunt bitch."
Just before he buried his head under his covers and cried tears of frustration, despair, but mostly just anger, he said, "My life could not get any worse."
He woke up on the ground.
At first he just thought that he'd fallen out of bed, but when he opened his eyes he realised that he was not in his bedroom any more, not unless someone came into his room in the middle of the night and decorated it with half-built buildings and a liberal amount of red dust, which coated everything that he could see. He sat up, shielding his eyes; although the sun was low in the sky, it was still bright and hot. It couldn't be much past dawn.
Was this a prank? Had someone moved him in the night? He didn't remember there being a wasteland like this anywhere around Seoul. "Hey!" he shouted, angrily. Donghae would have thought this would be a funny idea, though Kyuhyun probably had something to do with it too, the brat. They were probably hiding in one of the crumbling buildings around him. "Donghae! This isn't fucking funny!"
Nothing. No one answered, and the silence was beginning to creep him out. He realised, for the first time, that there was no bird call. The wind suddenly whistled through the window frames of a house behind him, making him jump six feet in the air. Wasn't this the set for some horror film he'd seen? "Donghae?"
No answer again. God, when Heechul got his hands on them. He stood up, doing his best to sweep the dust from his clothes, and then he froze. He wasn't wearing the tank top and pyjama bottoms he'd gone to bed in. Someone had dressed him in a pale pink t-shirt and his grey jeans, except that was impossible. His grey jeans needed a shoehorn to get into, no one could have dressed him in them without him waking up and demanding to know what the fuck was going on. Did they drug him? Could he claim rape when he got back from wherever he was? What the fuck was going on?
Surely, if he started walking, he'd come across someone somewhere, hopefully someone who could help him get back to Seoul. Maybe this really was a horror movie set and that would mean civilization was near. He picked a direction and started to walk; there must be a road to stumble upon.
The sun got higher in the sky, and although he didn't think it possible, the air around him got hotter. Now he knew why the ground looked scorched. He continued on, determined, vowing to get back at whoever abandoned him in this place. Very soon, he stoped bitching out loud. It was making his mouth dry, and he was thirsty. After all, he gotten drunk the night before. He'd just been dumped. The thought made him scowl and plod on. He wanted to punch Hwanghi in the face, and to do that, he needed to get back home.
Very soon, he thought that it was midday. He was thirsty and hungry, and once the sun began to get high in the sky, he began to feel too hot to be able to go on. For a moment, he entertained thoughts of just collapsing onto the ground. Then his skin started to blister.
Pinpricks of pain shot over any skin that was exposed before it suddenly erupted into burning. He yelled out, looked around for the cause, and then dived away into a building. The shadows were short but he just about to managed to get out of the sun. There he sat, in shock, staring at the skin on his hands and arms; it was pink, slightly shiny, like healing sunburn, and yes, he'd been in the sun all day, but he'd never known sunburn to feel like that. He shivered suddenly, skin hot but cold on the inside. Where the fuck was he?
He didn't know how long he waited there, but the shadows were much longer before he ventured out again. It was definitely cooling down and as he walked he managed to ignore the pain of his burnt skin. Even though the sun was still there, the burns didn't appear to get any worse.
The houses started to get closer together now. Perhaps it was a town, once, and he'd getting closer to the center of it. Out of curiousity, he touched the brickwork of a nearby building, one which still had the front wall intact, though the wood of the doors and windows had rotted away. It looked like it had once been a family house. The brick was warm, and fragile, breaking away like sand as he rubbed his fingers lightly across the surface. When he pulled his hand away, his fingers were covered in red dust. He sighed and wiped it on his jeans, then regretted it as all that did was make his jeans dirty.
He'd come across no one. A road would be impossible to find if this dust kept up. His skin burnt, his hair was uncombed and probably streaked with red, his clothes were covered in the stuff and he was hungry, tired and thirsty. It was probably just as well that he'd come across no one because chances were, he'd bite their head off. Miserable, he found a building that came complete with a roof and decided to put up camp for the night. Although he searched the whole building -- even risking the second floor, although the stairs seemed like they could collapse at any moment -- all he found was a thin covering that he wrapped around his shoulders. Still no food or water. He'd have to find at least the latter tomorrow. Much as he had hated the day -- and the day before hadn't been much better, that worst day of his life -- he still didn't want to die. He had a lot of revenge to exact.
He watched from his shelter as the sun went down, heaving a sigh of relief as the heat finally left the air, his burnt skin finally cooling. Then he shivered and pulled the blanket closer around him. Without the sun, the world was suddenly freezing. He huddled down in the corner out of the wind that had been blowing all day, a wind which burnt when the sun was out and which froze his bones now that the sun was gone, arms wrapped around himself, trying to conserve as much heat as he could. Suddenly, he was too scared to go to sleep, for fear that he would never wake up, frozen in his unconcious state.
The second morning found him exhausted and weak. He struggled upright, because he knew that he couldn't stay where he was, otherwise he'd die, and he swayed on his feet for a moment or two before he felt like he could move. The blanket he kept, wrapped around himself as a vague form of protection against the sun. Then he began to walk.
He'd been walking for about an hour or so, although he kept having to stop and rest, and as he went he let his thoughts wander, because that was all he could do, with nothing stretching out in front, behind, to the sides. He wondered if his friends were missing him. He wouldn't have turned up for work the day before, surely alarm bells would have been ringing. Maybe someone then rang Hwanghi to see if he was with him, and the break-up would have come out. Maybe Siwon was pouting that he hadn't been told immediately, but while Heechul loved his best friend and all, even Siwon wouldn't have been able to find the bright spot in the day. Actually, he might have considered the break-up the bright spot. Siwon had been the one who had disliked Hwanghi the most: Siwon, who liked everyone, who managed to find something good in everyone. "He's not good for you, hyung," he'd always said, and at the time, Heechul had disagreed.
This was all Hwanghi's fault, he decided. He'd probably walked here in his sleep, got a bus or something, because he was traumatized. Today it would become apparent that he really was missing. Another day at work that he missed. Maybe they'd start searching the river. The thought of people thinking that he'd kill himself over Park Hwanghi made him feel sick, though he approved of the dramatic nature of it.
"I was never in love with him," he said, like not having his love was his punishment on Hwanghi, but the thing was, it was probably true. He'd liked him well enough, but Hwanghi sort of lacked a personality. He took Heechul nice places and looked good next to him and was above average in bed. Heechul lived in the city, he didn't believe in happily-ever-afters anymore. Heechul had never been in love with the people that he'd dated, because he understood how life worked. Find yourself someone worthwhile and just stick with him. Don't go looking for someone better, because then you'd just be disappointed later. If you get used to a good relationship, then you're just going to be hurt later on when the spark went. That's why he only stuck with people who didn't have that spark to begin with.
Siwon had always told him off for that, telling him that he deserved better, but Heechul often thought that Siwon lived in a fairy story, where being yourself meant that you found someone who complimented you and who accepted you. Siwon had the wife, kids, white picket fence to look forward to. Heechul just wanted someone he looked good with.
He was so occupied with his thoughts that he didn't notice the people up ahead until he could make out individual bodies. "Hey!" he shouted, and waved his arm in the air. "Finally! HEY!"
Their heads turned towards him, sharply. It was a group movement; five of them, all turning at the exact same moment. That was so creepy, he thought, and wished, suddenly, that he hadn't shouted. He stopped. None of the strangers make a sound, standing still. Then one of them made a noise and he was blinded for a second as the sunlight glared off the knives that they'd all just drawn from their sides. Then he could see, could see that they were running towards him.
He didn't think twice: he turned and fled, but he was weak and he was slower than them, not exactly used to having to run for things other than the train. He didn't know what the fuck was going on, but when he looked back he could see a strange expression on their faces, something not quite human. Bloodthirsty, almost. He didn't look back again, didn't get a chance, because when he looked back the first time, he tripped over something on the ground and went sprawling down on his front, twisting his ankle a little.
He lay, very still. There was no way he can outrun these people, not with hunger knawing away at him, with his mouth as dry as it is, not with exhaustion running through his bones and a twinge of pain in his ankle. He played dead in the hope that they left him alone, face pressed to the ground, trying to keep his breathing as shallow as possible. All he wanted to do was scream. Instead, he remained silent, and he heard them circle him, chattering amongst themselves in a language that he didn't recognise. It sounded a lot like Mandarin, only not quite, a slight difference in tone. He stayed still and quiet as he listened to one of them come near him -- and then screamed in pain as a knife cut through the skin on his back.
His pain caused them great amusement, their laughter like that of monkeys. He turned over, furious, but couldn't do anything other than support himself upright, too tired now to speak. He didn't know how deep the cut was, but it was painful enough to make his eyes water, could feel blood dripping down his back. Then the cause of the pain, the man holding a knife dripping with his blood, planted his foot on Heechul's chest and kicked him back to the ground.
He screamed again, terrible raw pain erupting all over him as the dust in the road got into the wound. That was pain beyond anything he'd ever felt before, and he broke his leg in three places when he was eighteen, so he knew about pain. The foot pressed down on his stomach, which forced more dust into his back. He was sobbing now, but managed to get his fingers around the man's ankle, pulling up the leg of his pants to dig his nails into his leg. The man just laughed and kicked his hands away before turning from him. He said something to the others, who laughed and nodded and then, as one, they turned and walked away, ignoring his cries.
He tried to move but couldn't, barely able to think, gaze fogging over. They'd left him there to die. Soon, the sun would reach the highest point and like the day before, he would burn, except this time, he wouldn't be able to move out of contact. He'd be stuck here. He would die. The thought terrified him beyond reason: he did not want to die, not here, not like this. He didn't even know where he was. No one would ever find him. His parents, Siwon, his other friends: they would never know what happened to him. He wasn't supposed to die like this! He was never supposed to die!
He began to yell for help, although it irritated his dry throat and he knew that it was useless. The only other people around were the ones who left him like this; they weren't going to be willing to help him. The sun was almost at the high point, he noted with dismay. Soon, he would die. The last thought he had before he blacked out was, "I'm too pretty to go like this."
He woke up to see a man holding a knife leaning over him.