my head hurts

When I was three years old, my mother died in a car crash.

When I was seventeen, I watched my friend die in an accident, his blood on my hands.

When I was nineteen, I stood helpless as the man I had once trusted with my life killed the one I had once loved.

Now, here I was, twenty-two, with my only remaining family dead on the floor next to me.

And I couldn't do anything about it.

They found me a few hours later.

The racers' voices were hushed, movements quiet as they moved into the room, one by one. I could hear them because I was silent now—silenced. The quiet seemed almost respectful, and maybe another day I would have had a bitter thought to counter that—respectful murders?—but my mind was shut. I felt empty.

I was empty.

Dawn had turned into day, and I had watched the sun rise through my blindfold. The Lees hadn't even bothered with untying me. I was still in the same position I had been when they had tied me to the chair, and my body was numb to the pain. Moving would have hurt more at that point.

The hands on my wrists were warm, slow, and worried. Even if I couldn't see him, I knew it was Vernon, with the quiet, horrified way he untied me and pulled me up. I fell into his arms as easily as a rag doll, and he held me up as he picked me up from the floor and looked at the pieces of me that remained, but he didn't disturb them. Didn't try to put them back together, but let me stagger forward and be lost for a while.

Thank you, I whispered silently, because my throat felt hoarse from all the screaming and I knew I couldn't get a word out.

I leaned into his warm chest, his rough hands steadying me. There was no hatred in my thoughts, no mistrust, nothing. Just a wide blankness as infinite as the sky, and I didn't even want to escape it.

"Don't look," he muttered, and I pressed my face into his chest. My eyes were dry, but my heart was bleeding from an open wound. In my disorientated state, I didn't even realise that he was shaking—anger, fear, disgust?

I didn't want to look.

I didn't want to see the bloody remains of my father's body. Had they shot him in the chest? Or the head? I hoped it was the latter, all I could wish upon him was a quick death. Despite the hate, there was a morbid gratitude in me for my father's killers—at least they hadn't let him bleed out. At least they hadn't made a daughter listen to her father die.

It was a horrible thought, but it was all I could think about. That, and mercy and nothing, like my thoughts were nothing but an empty scroll waiting for something else to happen—for someone to paint it red with blood. It was waiting for revenge.

Vernon's hands found me again, and I didn't quiet know who was holding on to who. I felt like a limo doll in his arms, but I had never been more thankful to have someone next to me, and at that moment, he was not a liar. He wasn't a nice guy, or a murderer, or the right hand of a gang leader who was responsible for the death of so many.

He was necessary.

I barely felt myself move as he I was taken up to my room, and left to lie undisturbed in my bed. The blinds were drawn, and the racers left me alone—I wanted to think that it was a gesture of consolation or worry on their part, but deep down, I knew what it really was.

Fear.

They were afraid of me, afraid of what I might do next. Whether it was a fear of their own guilt, or my hunting knife, or the bloodthirsty demon lying in wait inside my heart, I wasn't sure. Maybe they were just afraid of what I might say. That I might turn the daggers pointing inwards towards them, slaughter them with my words and leave them to bleed out. No, not the racers.

Vernon was afraid of me.

I closed my eyes.

──────

"Please, please answer the question." This was Jun, desperate next to my bed as he begged me to say something. Anything. "This is really important, Y/N. I know I could never understand what you're going through, that we can never understand, but we need your help."

I didn't open my eyes. The room was so quiet that one would have thought it to be completely unoccupied, but I knew that was not the case. I wasn't sure how many racers currently stood around the bed—as if I were a patient on her deathbed—but I could sense them. Their bated breaths. Their grim faces as they tried not to look at me.

The warmth of their blood.

You could have done something.

I had been more uncooperative than ever, which was saying something, since I had never truly been cooperative in the first place. At least after they had showed up here.

The edges of time had blurred and the days had faded in, faded out behind the curtains that didn't let in any light. I had no idea how much time had passed since I had first come into this room, and I didn't care. My days had turned into nothing but sleep—sleeping off the pain, sleeping through the pain, sleeping with the pain. I knew nothing else, and nothing else knew me.

You could have saved him.

And if I didn't cooperative, I wouldn't be able to save anyone else. I knew that well—the only thing that stood between me and the answers was doubt. Did I even want to save anyone else?

Slowly, I opened my eyes. I had been propped up against the headboard. Slowly, I pulled my arms out from underneath the sheet and lay them out in front of me, face as emotionless as a marble statue. My wrists were still bruised gold and green and purple from the bonds, and parts of my body still hurt. The wounds had been treated while I was sleeping. I didn't know who had treated them.

"What did he look like?" Jun's face was avid, bright eyes and sad eyes all at once. His lips pursed as he bent to my level, kneeling on the floor next to my bed. He had beautiful eyes. There was apology in those eyes, apology and a sense of regret and longing for something faraway and unattainable, a feeling I could relate to. The longing for a life of normalcy. "Please."

I swallowed, and glanced away, unable to look into his eyes any longer. I was scared that I would feel it too much, and empathy would drag me down into the abyss of my grief, which was something I couldn't deal with. Not then. I had a very important job, and I couldn't let petty feelings get in the way.

You can still save someone.

"Blonde," I said finally, and my voice felt as dry and cracked as my lips. A land that hadn't seen rain in years. "Golden-blonde, hair the color of caramel or wheat sheaf. He was very pale, and had features that were prominent but rounded."

Vernon unfolded his arms and stood a little straighter. His gaze was still intense, and even though I didn't look at him, I could feel the weight of it weigh down on me. "Did he have a tattoo?"

With slow movements, I brought my hand up to rest on the back of my neck. "Here," I said softly.

Lucas swore.

I raised an eyebrow without looking away from the spotless white sheet. Jun was still in my peripheral vision, sitting very still, as if I were a wild animal which was better left undisturbed.

"Was there anyone else with him?" Vernon asked, his voice placating and smooth. It held none of its usual tenderness when he talked to me, but there was an undertone of worry that laced it, lightly veiled underneath the calmness. "Besides the...heir."

"A killer named Seoho," I said. "And Jimin."

Lucas swore again. "Seoho. That's the guy who hit me over the head."

"There might have been more," Vernon said. "Did you hear anyone else? Or even a mention of another person?"

I shook my head, but Jungkook beat me to it. "They didn't need another person," he said smoothly. "A single bred killer from the clan is enough, and both of the killers were born into the family. They only brought two men because of the heir, and even that was too careful."

"So it was him," Vernon muttered, more to himself than the assembly. He laughed, a staccato laugh that stopped as soon as it started, a dry, bitter sound. "Taemin."

"The emphatic killer," Jungkook said, and from the way he said it, it sounded like an inside joke of sorts. I remembered that Vernon was his right hand, and that they had probably worked very closely in the past, and felt sick all over again.

I don't know why I didn't ask him what he had meant by that. I just didn't. I was beyond caring at that point.

"Was there anything else?" Jun asked hopefully, hands pulled together. "Anything they said that might tell us something?"

"What's there to know?" I said, but there was no real force behind the question. "Ken told you where they were. There's no other information that can help."

"You're alive," Vernon whispered, which surprised me so much that I lifted my gaze off the bed to look at him. He looked and sounded like he had been bled dry, and there was raw emotion in his voice. With a jolt, I realized that this was the first time I was seeing him express emotion with someone else in the room. He looked relieved, and wild. The hollows of his cheeks made his jaw more prominent, and his eyes shone with fervor.

The way he looked at me felt like a responsibility being handed over, and I couldn't handle it. I looked away again, burning on the inside. Don't look at me like that, I wanted to scream. Like you're glad I'm fine even when I shouldn't be, when he's not here.

"What he means is that the heir let you live," Yeeun supplied in her matter-of-fact manner. "That means there's been a development we don't know about—that no one knows about, unless Ken omitted the information by choice. If the heir told you something, or if he gave something away by accident, you should tell us now."

I almost laughed. They clearly had never met the heir, and I didn't know how to put it to them. That the heir never gave anything away—at least, not by accident. If he had let a fact slip, it was because he wanted me to know. To suffer because of it.

Every move the heir made was deliberate, cunning, and if we walked one step ahead he'd already be a mile away. There was nothing the racers could do to protect me from him, and his clan of killers.

Not that I needed protection anymore. It was they who needed to look out for themselves, because the heir had made it clear who he was going to go after.

"He spoke about Baekhyun," I said, and my voice cracked at his name. I was beginning to think I had accepted his death until the heir had brought him up, viciously reopened the wound with his honeysuckle voice. "He said that him being placed in charge of me was a coincidence."

"Baekhyun?" Vernon's voice was back to normal, as if his perfect façade had never cracked. "What's he got to do with the Lees?"

"Do you really not know?" I whispered hoarsely. "Or is it yet another detail you need to hide from me?"

Silence. I closed my eyes and lay my head against the headboard, and tried to think. My father is dead. My father is dead. My father—

I looked up. Jungkook was the only one left. He was standing at the door, expression closed off, eyes flat and sharp as knives.

"Maybe if you had stayed in Seoul," he said, "he would have been alive right now."

──────

TAEMIN IS NOT THE HEIR !! SHE DIDN'T SEE THE HEIR BECAUSE OF THE BLINDFOLD !! TAEMIN IS A LEE KILLER !!

so i watched the 190922 vernon fancam for the inkigayo rehearsal and forgot what breathing was. maybe hunt!vernon should be silver-haired too...