clinging onto the edge of control
pg - 13 | myungsoo/krystal | 5075w
- wherein krystal loses control
and myungsoo is no longer there to help her.
warnings: character death.
photo credit
music: wake up by snsd
inspired by the fanfiction letters on a train to nowhere
It wasn’t always like this. She never needed these weird people from the hospital trying to poke needles into her and force pills down her throat and ask her what’s wrong. She only needs Myungsoo. But he isn’t around anymore, she tells herself, and she has to be strong. But this always never works because whenever she thinks about him there is a darkness that takes over and tugs her everywhere and it hurts but she can never explain it to anyone. No one would understand. No one has. Except Myungsoo.
She sits in her room and Minho, her new guardian looks at her warily, because nobody knows if she’s ever going to go on another one of her ‘psychotic rampages’, finger apostrophes and all. At least, that’s what they say. Krystal remembers nothing of her ‘psychotic rampage’.
They tell her she almost killed her sister but that’s not possible, because Jessica loves her so much and she loves Jessica too so there’s no way that could happen. They tell her she got high on drugs and broke windows and tore shreds of paper and threw them everywhere but that’s not possible either because she doesn’t remember ever being addicted to drugs. Disgusting, that’s what they are. They tell her she’s diagnosed with a mutated form of mental disease but she doesn’t believe it, because how can she be crazy?
I’m not insane. I’m not insane. I’m not insane.
Krystal flops onto the bed and tucks herself under the covers, hoping that this is just a terrifying nightmare and that if she gets enough sleep it will all be okay. But this is all pointless because no matter how hard she tries, she never seems to wake up. Maybe she isn’t trying hard enough. She squeezes her eyes shut but doesn’t get to fall asleep because Minho’s low voice snaps them right open again.
“What are you doing?”
She folds her arms and glares at him furiously. “I’m trying to sleep.”
A look of confusion on his face. “But you just woke up four hours ago. And it’s almost lunchtime.”
“So?”
He opens his mouth and closes it again, like a fish. It doesn’t amuse her very much. When he doesn’t say anything else, she sighs heavily and tries to sleep again. (This time, Minho doesn’t stop her. This time, Minho just sits and watches. This time, Minho doesn’t wake her up for lunch because she looks so peaceful and angelic in her sleep. And she never is.)
Krystal believes in fairytales. She believes in miracles. She believes in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. She believes that dreams do come true. She believes that the red string of fate isn’t some stupid Chinese wise guy making up some random crap about love. She believes in Prince Charming. She believes in love.
So when she is grounded by her mother because she snuck out of the house at midnight to some club with a bunch of her friends and because she didn’t pick up her phone, she believes that Myungsoo will find a way to meet her some way or another.
She picks up her notepad and scribbles on it, then finds herself writing out a few lines of Sleeping Beauty’s story.
One day he’ll come. One day he’ll come and save her. One day he’ll come and wake her up with a kiss and show the world that love can win even the most powerful enemy. One day, she’ll wake up. One day, they’ll fall in love.
Krystal smiles, tearing out the sheet of paper and getting a piece of tape. Just as she hops of the bed to stick the paper to her bedroom wall, she hears three knocks on the window. She knows it’s her Prince Charming but she still gets mad at him anyway, because he knocked three times.
He stands outside, on her balcony, waiting for her to let him in but she refuses, until he realizes what’s going on and knocks a fourth time. Then there is no more tension and she silently slides the door open, praying that her parents can’t hear her from downstairs. Just to be careful, she tiptoes towards the main door and locks it, the click sound bringing relief to her heart.
Myungsoo walks inside casually and looks at the wall, noticing the new piece of paper with a smile that reaches his eyes and she tugs on his hand, twice, asking silently for permission for a kiss. He chuckles and pulls her close, inhaling her scent deeply before tipping her chin with two fingers and capturing her lips in his for a kiss that lasts ten seconds (he counts). Then they pull away for air and Krystal leads him to her bed.
“Seems like our beautiful princess her got herself into trouble, did she now?”
He grins and taps her nose. Slipping an arm around her waist, he feels her snuggle into his chest, nodding. Myungsoo rests his head on top of hers and kisses her forehead, clucking under his breath, but it’s loud enough for her to hear anyway, because Krystal picks up everything within a three-mile radius.
Krystal has exceptional senses. She has perfect eyesight, ears that can tune in to specific sounds and tune out unpleasant ones, skin that is sensitive to everything, a tongue that can differentiate between even the smallest of tastes. Sometimes she wonders if this is God’s way of telling her that she’s not completely a lost cause.
Other times she just thinks that Myungsoo is the only thing that’s keeping her from losing her edge. That without him, she will cease to exist. That her life basically depends on him (which is true to a certain extent, but she doesn’t say it; she can’t ever find the words).
“What are you thinking?” Myungsoo asks, bringing a hand up to caress her flawless, porcelain-like skin on her cheek.
“About how much I love you.”
Krystal means it with every fiber in her being. And she knows that he knows it too.
She closes her eyes and presses her ear to his chest, right on top of his heart. The rhythmic, even beating of his heart soothes her greatly, and her hand takes one step, two steps, three steps, four towards his stomach, lifting his shirt slightly and tracing two fingers over his scar, an ugly memory deep within the recesses of Myungsoo’s mind that he’s only told her once, and she’s always remembered.
“Myungsoo?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you miss your dad?”
“Still? No. Not really.” He shifts a little, accommodating her better on the bed, and tightening his grip on her. “I promised him I’d let go. I promised him I’d take care of my mom and myself. I promised him I wouldn’t brood over him too long. And I didn’t.
“Let go?”
“Yeah. Sometimes letting go is the worst. But you know, people are always going to leave you in your life. You’re gonna lose people. But you’re never going to be happy until you let go of the things that hold you back.”
“Are you happy?”
“Maybe.”
She is trapped. In a dark alley. She is blindfolded, the silky dark material of the cloth blinding both her eyes and her ears, cutting off two of her most important senses. She cannot think, and the world is spinning and she hears a few hushed whispers in a corner and she tries to struggle but ropes hold her back, slicing through her skin and she feels the blood dripping down her wrist. Anger is coursing, pumping, flowing through her veins and she thinks of all the ways she can kill these people. She hates them. Hates, hates, hates them to the very core. Why her? Why -
“Hush now, little girl, we’re just going to have some fun with you…”
A dark chuckle. A hand reaching between her thighs. Another touching her face. A third hand dipping into her shirt. All three men are groping her in places where no other human being has dared to touch before. And the worst part is that she can’t do anything to stop it. Tries to scream but there is tape across her mouth, and all that comes out is a muffle. She is kicked to her feet and she stumbles as a palm slaps her behind.
“Shh… We told you to keep quiet…”
Krystal bites her lip so hard there’s now fresh, copper-tasting blood on her tongue. Her hands reach for the pocketknife in her back pocket, but one of the men grabs hold, with a vice-like iron grip, onto her wrist and she can already feel a mark forming. Lips on her neck, lips on her stomach, lips on her thighs, lips on her arms. Lips, lips, lips, lips. She keeps still for a single moment and she starts to formulate an escape -
“Let go of her!”
A voice that she recognizes breaks through, and a ray of hope makes her gasp breathlessly. That person takes large strides towards the men and threaten them to let go because he’s already called the cops and that person isn’t intimidated by the men starts throwing punches and kicks at the men. And somehow that person steals a precious moment to lift her up into his arms because somehow or another she’s fallen to the ground and that person whispers that everything’s going to be okay and that if it’s okay for him to run because he didn’t really call the police and if they don’t escape soon they’ll come after them.
Krystal nods and drifts into a state of sub-consciousness. Everything is white and heavenly and she feels Myungsoo untying the ropes that strangle her, Myungsoo constantly repeating to her that it’s going to be okay, Myungsoo wrapping his arms around her and dropping butterfly-like kisses on her face, soft, delicate, unlike the men’s kisses. Finally he removes her blindfold and the tape across her mouth, and carefully holds her face in his hands.
“Krystal. Soojung. Soojung-ah, please tell me you’re okay.”
And she nods, because everything’s really okay. As long as the men aren’t touching her anymore, as long as the hands on her body are Myungsoo’s, everything’s okay. For now.
“God, Krystal. I thought… I thought…”
Myungsoo trails off, looking into her tired eyes and motions for her to sleep, running his fingers through her hair, telling her that she should rest after the ordeal that she’s just went through. He tells her that she’s lucky she’s living alone now or she’d have to answer a lot of questions. He stops talking when he realizes that she’s not sleeping, and waits until her eyes close and her breathing evens out, and then peels off her shirt and starts to clean up her wounds.
He wonders for a brief moment and wonders if this would’ve happened to any normal girl. If her illness has anything to do with this. He pauses, slapping himself mentally and gets back to washing her up, because he knows that he should never blame her illness for anything, since it’s out of her control.
Sometimes though, he can't help but wish she has some control.
Numbers.
Krystal hates them sometimes. She doesn’t like odd numbers. She doesn’t like the number three. Number five. Number seven. Number sixty-nine. Number ninety-nine. Ninety-nine is the worst. It’s a number that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Why can’t it be a nice number like ninety-eight? Why not one hundred? Why be something almost there but not quite yet? Frankly, Krystal wonders about why numbers exist.
Numbers are useless.
She hates them when she can’t find her second pencil. She hates them when there are three peas on her plate. She hates them when a colour from her marker set is missing. She hates them when she does math and she doesn’t get a full, whole number. She hates math in general.
Myungsoo comes over to study sometimes. Most of the time he helps her with her math homework. Not because she can’t do it, but because the numbers drive her mad. A lot of times she gets stuck at a question because there are too many numbers, and they end up swirling round and round and round and she can’t stop them because they’re really just sitting there on a piece of paper, black print on a white surface, staring up at her.
He wishes he sees what Krystal sees. He wishes he could understand the world from her point of view. He wishes and wishes and wishes but he knows it’s not possible because she’s crazy and he’s not.
Sometimes that’s the most frustrating thing.
“Myungsoo… Myungsoo, how do you do this?” she’d ask, a genuinely confused expression on her face.
And he’d lean over only to realize that it’s an easy question with a string of long numbers. it’s just simple calculation but the numbers scare her. He’d take her hand and squeeze it gently (twice, he remembers), then tell her that the numbers aren’t going to harm her and that she can do this question. She’d then stare at the paper for a long while, eyebrows fixed together, until beginning to - painstakingly - slowly work through the question.
Krystal has all kinds of obsessions and compulsions. Her fear of making mistakes, of causing harm to another, need for symmetry and preciseness, constant doubt of anything and everything, compulsions to repeat things to herself, to check and check and check again, to collect random things and to rearrange everything so that it looks nicer.
Myungsoo sits through all of that.
He’s grown somewhat immune when she keeps reviewing the same material over and over again, when she takes all the stuff from his pencil box out and arranges it nicely in colours and direction in which the tips of the pens are facing, when she keeps washing already-clean clothes and setting them out to dry and ironing and repeating the process, when she wants to make sure that everything’s in order and that everything’s perfect and that nothing is out of line.
Krystal strives for perfection.
Sometimes, Myungsoo wonders if some day he becomes less than perfect for her.
5:24
5:25
5:26
Why isn’t Myungsoo here yet? She sits on the bench at the train station and waits alone. Time passes by excruciatingly slowly. Myungsoo is never late, so why is he late now? She looks around furtively and tries to ignore the palpitating of her heart, tries to ignore the tick-tocking of her supposedly digital watch, which is not so digital considering she can still hear the second hand ticking away. Stupid numbers, she thinks, wrapping her arms around herself as some form of comfort. She decides that she will wait, but only because the person she’s waiting for is Myungsoo, and he never breaks his promise, no matter what.
She watches the sky turn dark and goosebumps rise on her skin. She feels the tension rising and she feels the air thinning and the wind blowing, sending sharp attacks up and down her spine. She starts to rock, counting to herself from one to ten and ten to one and one to ten and so on and so forth. It keeps her calm, but only for a while longer.
5:53
5:54
5:55
Why isn’t Myungsoo here yet? She starts to get afraid now. Afraid of the people that look at her with pitiful eyes. She can see it in their gazes. Oh, the poor little girl. Oh, she must be so cold. Oh, does she have a home to stay? She takes a deep breath and holds it in, thinking of Myungsoo. Myungsoo, Myungsoo, Myungsoo. She looks at the people again and they still have those looks in their eyes. She is this close to raising her middle finger and yelling fuck you at all of them. Because she is not starved of her meals, because she is not a homeless girl, because she does not need their pity and because she’s just waiting for her boyfriend who hasn’t showed up (yet).
She takes out her notepad and attempts to make a list of possible reasons why Myungsoo is late, but it doesn’t work because she’s on an edge and she can barely write with her hand shaking so hard and so fast and so vigorously. She’s on the very verge of throwing up or having a panic attack because it’s getting so very dark and she can’t stand the dark.
6:12
6:13
6:14
The tears come fairly slowly, running down her cheeks and she doesn’t bother to even wipe them because nothing matters anymore. She’s afraid to go home because it’s dark now and who knows what’s out there? Ever since that incident two years ago, she’s always been afraid of the dark. She only goes home with Myungsoo. They are apartment-mates, and she is thankful for that, because she can’t imagine anyone else being her guardian angel.
She starts ripping her papers into shreds and tries to ignore the stares of the people who are walking by. Worthless idiots. She is a moment away from popping a shred of paper in her mouth when a hand grabs her wrist and pulls her into a hug. She’s prepared to push the stranger away and kick him where it hurts most until she realizes it’s Myungsoo.
6:34
“Krystal I’m so, so, so terribly sorry that I had to put you through waiting and I know you absolutely loathe waiting so it was extremely unreasonable for me to be late and God I’m just so… sorry.”
He holds her at a distance, but close enough to notice the tears welled up in her eyes and he leans forward to kiss them away. She chews on her lower lip and tugs on the hem of her shirt. Another close call. “I was scared,” she whispers, trying so very hard to sound normal but her voice betrays her and cracks. Guilt fills the silence for a while and Myungsoo says nothing. Just holds her in his arms for as long as he can.
She wonders if he knows that his touch is the only thing keeping her sane.
She forgets to take the pills one night, when she knows it’s her peak period for the nightmares and her doctor advised her one too many times but she never heeds his advice. As long as she has Myungsoo, it’s fine. Nothing’s going to happen, everything’s going to be okay.
It’s about four in the morning and Myungsoo’s arms are wrapped around her tightly, their legs under the cover tangled and she wonders if there’s a way to untangle them without him waking up. She abandons that idea and decides to try and sleep again, but the nightmares have returned. The mocking voices and calls of the night, pulling and tugging and forcing her to go to places she doesn’t want to go. She’s alone in a frosty land with no one in sight. The winter is cold and she doesn’t know what to do and she can’t seem to wake up and she screams but there is no sound from her strangled throat and it burns, burns -
“Hey.”
His voice wakes her up from the horrible nightmare and she clings to him, the beads of sweat on her forehead transferring to his sleeve. She knows he has to work early, in about two hours and didn’t want to wake him up but now that she has, she can’t do anything about it.
The thing is, with Myungsoo, once he’s up, he’s up. He can never go back to sleep.
“I’m sorry, I forgot to take my pills. I’m sorry Myungsoo. I’m sorry I’m so stupid I’m sorry I didn’t… I’m sorry I - ”
“Shh… Try to sleep, Krystal.”
“I… I don’t want to, Myungsoo.”
“You have to try.”
“What if those nightmares come back?”
“I’ll be here.”
“But…”
“Don’t. Try, please,” he whispers, his fingers oh so gently combing through her hair, his arm tightening around her waist, giving her a sense of security no one could have ever given her. Not even a million bodyguards could compare to this. So she doesn’t say another word, and instead, close her eyes and tries to sleep.
Myungsoo watches her with a wary, bloodshot eye open, the other half-closed. Truthfully, he hates it when she wakes him up with the nightmares. But, of course, he reminds himself again that he cannot blame her for the illness she’s plagued with. It is out of her control. She can’t control it. He hears the soft mumblings of “don’t go”, “please, stay”, “don’t hurt me”, “I can’t help it…” And he is very painfully reminded of the night where those men raped her. He feels a tug at his heartstrings and he holds her closer, and the cries somewhat soften a bit, and he feels just a little less guilty.
There are many kinds of love in the world. Myungsoo wonders what kind of love exactly he feels for Krystal.
Myungsoo decides to take Krystal out for a night under the stars one night, and without telling her, he takes her hand and leads her out into a clearing he found one day while exploring their park. A forbidden clearing, he likes to think, but it’s probably just an abandoned government-owned land. Either way, he finds it perfect and Krystal is going to love it. He already knows.
“I’m scared, Myungsoo,” she whispers into the dark as he takes her.
“I’m right here,” he reminds her. (Time and time again.)
She hesitates for a second, pausing to take a quick, tiny breath, before swiftly following after him. It’s a few more minutes away, he tells her, and she is grateful for his holding of her hand. If they were married, this would be an interesting way to elope, she thinks, smiling to herself and thankfully he doesn’t notice, because he may ask, and that gets fairly awkward sometimes, and she absolutely loathes socially awkward situations because they make her feel out of place and strange.
“Look up.”
Krystal looks up obediently, and luminous lights are dotting the dark sky, and she draws with her fingers shapes that she spot that the lights are making. Stars, is that what they’re called? She thinks they’re absolutely gorgeous and she stares for a long while, just admiring the way they shine and sparkle and she wishes for one of them ‘shooting stars’ to streak across the sky so she can make a wish. She feels a smile tugging at her lips when she starts counting the stars.
One two three four five six seven eight nine ten one two three four five six seven eight nine ten one two three four five six seven eight nine ten… She tugs on Myungsoo’s hand and he bends down. She sits atop of his shoulders and puts her hand to her forehead in a military-style salute position as she stares at them some more.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Myungsoo asks, holding Krystal’s free hand and tracing the gentle lines across her palm, meander-like curves, swirly, swirly, swirly, never-ending.
She nods, and leans down to his ear and says to him, “Thank you for bringing me here. I would never have been able to come out here on my own.”
“I know. You wanna stay a little more?”
He turns and they find themselves on a picnic mat filled with all kinds of foods, and Krystal finds her mouth watering. He chuckles, bends, and sets her down on his lap as he reaches for an éclair. He tells her to open her mouth and he feeds her the éclair, laughing and smiling with her.
He remembers how perfect she looks while smiling now.
It’s been a while since she’s smiled.
Really, truly smiled. Yes, it has been a long while.
She catches him staring and asks why. Why, he repeats, as he tucks a few stray strands of hair behind her ear, his lips on her shoulder, then on the back of her neck. “Because you’re beautiful,” he replies, and that makes her blush and she’s glad that he cannot see in this darkness. “You’re the brightest star of all.”
And these are one of the rare moments where she completely loses herself, her arms sliding around his neck and he pulls her close and captures her lips in a tantalizing kiss. Her eyes close and she breaks free of all inhabitations, feeling the passion and heat and lingering aftertaste of fresh mint and honey once he pulls away, his fingertips grazing her cheeks, his hands coming up to hold her face in them. He locks his gaze, eyes crinkling just a tiny bit at the sides.
“Do you think I’m crazy, Myungsoo?”
Her question catches him off-guard for a moment. She watches his face shift gracefully through various emotions, until finally settling for blank confusion, and borderline, just borderline perturbed.
“Maybe you are, Krystal. But I love you, even if you are.”
“Forever?”
She holds up her pinky, gazing into his misty eyes.
It’s only when Myungsoo hooks his pinky around hers and kiss her eyes then does she realize that there are fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Hello, m’am? Is this Jung Soojung?”
“Krystal, actually. But yes, this is Jung Soojung.”
“Your… boyfriend, Kim Myungsoo, was involved in a car accident. He was rushed to the hospital, but we couldn’t save him in time. Would you like to come over and -“
Krystal hangs up before anything else is being said.
Krystal slams her phone onto the ground, her foot on top of it, giving it one push and she hears the phone shattering into a million bits under it. Do you hear that? It’s not just her phone that’s broken now. It’s her, her heart, her soul, her feelings, her body, her all, her everything -
Myungsoo.
His name is a distant, faint whisper on her lips as she falls to the ground, everything around her blends together, the world is spinning, spinning, spinning and she can’t do anything to control it. She aches for control at this moment. Concentrate. Focus. Understand. None of these work. She tries to breathe but she can’t. She tries to scream but nothing comes out. She tries to stand up but her legs give way even before she’s halfway upright.
Blood rushes to her head way too fast, pumping through her veins. Everything in her pulsates. A sudden wave of nausea sends her bent over the sink, clutching at her stomach and clutching at her heart, long fingernails trailing across her arm, her thigh. Drops of blood appear on the surface, and her eyes flash with resentment as she looks at the mirror, hating herself.
She hates and hates and hates. Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it be her? Why couldn’t it be the crazy one? Why couldn’t it have been the one who was already a threat to the world? Why did it have to be the normal one?
Voices yell and scream and shriek in her head, and her face contorts, twists. She yanks at her hair in an attempt to make the voices shut up, but it’s like her worst nightmare that has come knocking on her again. Her eyes are two hollow circles void of emotion. Suddenly everything seems too big, too frightening. She drops to the ground again, writhing.
It hurts everywhere.
Krystal hears the door open and it must be Jessica who promised to visit a few days ago because she just returned from California but she can’t bring herself to face her sister because what’s the point in her looking or talking to anyone know that the person she lives for is gone? She feels arms around her and she’s kicking and screaming as Jessica carries her out of the bathroom, sets her down on the bed. She protests and hears her sister’s cries as her feet slam into Jessica’s ribs, her fists throwing punches at Jessica’s face but she doesn’t stop, can’t stop, won’t stop.
It’s going to be okay, Jessica says.
Please stop hitting me, Jessica says.
You’re killing yourself, Jessica says.
“I wish,” Krystal whispers with venom in her words, and in that one moment where she lets her guard down she feels Jessica pressing down somewhere around her neck area and the darkness surrounds her like a deep, black abyss. The last wish she makes is that this is hell and that she’ll never wake up.
(This is the version that she remembers. Not the one with drugs.)
Minho’s not there when she wakes up. And it’s the first thing she realizes. The second thing she realizes is that Myungsoo’s dead. She breathes hard and heavy. Maybe Myungsoo’s still around. Maybe his ghost haunts the very room she’s in at this moment. The possibility makes her a little happier, but he’s still gone anyway. There will be no one for her to trust, there will be no one to tell her that there won’t be nightmares, there will be no one to promise her forever, because even Myungsoo, who always kept promises, broke his promise of forever. The world has become a hellhole, a bleak picture of nothing.
It’s surprising that she can accept this, but not the fact that they’ve labeled her mental.
From this point forth she knows that her life is going to be filled with strikeout thoughts, that she will never be able to be normal again, that she won’t even stand a chance now, that this is because of him, that this is because of that fucking idiot of a driver who drank before he drove, that this is because she almost killed her sister who tried to help, that she won’t accept help from anyone, that she is alone, that she won’t see Myungsoo ever again, that she’s clinging onto the edge of control that is this close to slipping out of her fingers.
This close.
Or maybe, there’s a tiny part of her, just a tiny part that thinks this, she’s already lost it. But she’s not willing to admit it because who would be stupid enough to admit that they’re crazy because other people tell them so?
Myungsoo didn’t say it.
But wait. He’s gone, you stupid fool.
I’m not insane. I’m not insane. I’m not insane.