Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is nothing special about the night Ryo dreams about the bird.

It's the middle of promotions, which means late nights and early mornings, and so the four hours he does manage to catch in bed before they're woken up to be shuttled to another performance show are precious.

He'd gone to bed with the flavour of mint toothpaste only just covering the taste of the snacks Sion had fed him in the car home. Across the room, Sakuya had barely done more than grunt before falling into his own sheets. The sound of water from the shower, Sion in the bathroom, had been a low hum in the distance - not loud enough to keep him awake, not when he's been that tired.

Nothing had stood out. Even thinking back, Ryo can't place a single moment he'd describe as odd. That something might have been wrong.

But that's the night he dreams about the bird.

In the dream, there's an endless blue sky in front of him. He's somewhere in the air, because he can see the ground a million miles beneath his feet, but he's not falling and the recognition of the height doesn't scare him.

He's flying.

There is both a bird that he knows is there, because he can see the bright yellow feathers and the extended wings. He can see it swoop in the endless sky like it's going to drop, only to catch itself moments later on a breeze - golden and glowing, the colour of butter or the warmth of the sun on the sidewalk.

Yet somehow he is also the bird. He's seeing from the eyes of the animal at the same time he knows what the tips of his feathers look like. Ryo knows how to fly because as a bird, it is the easiest thing in the world. He sees the sky through human eyes with colours and light, but the scenery outstretched in front of him is flown over by a creature with wings.

He does not know what kind of bird it is. It's yellow, he can see that, but it's so bright that he thinks it might be a species of bird that only exists inside of his imagination. It's not like he's a bird expert. There's no way his mind could capture something completely realistic. Just like how he can see the bird and be the bird at the same time, it doesn't have to be correct - it just is.

Then he wakes up.

Thinking about it, there's nothing special about the dream either. Ryo wakes up and it's hazy in his mind the way that all dreams are when you're no longer sleeping.

Sakuya is snoring slightly on the other side of the room.

It's all Ryo wants to do to climb back underneath the covers and fall asleep again, but he looks at the neon numbers of the alarm clock by his head and almost groans out loud. Only five minutes before he'd have to get up anyway. They have a whole day photoshoot, and a year and a half of idol experience has taught him when it's not worth pushing your luck.

He throws an arm over his head and blinks away the sleepiness instead. An alarm goes off in a different room and the noise of Sion thumping the machine to get it to be quiet is loud enough that it travels through the walls.

Sakuya snuffles. Ryo listens to his breathing even out, practically counts the seconds until their own alarms go off, and watches from his own pulled-up duvet as Sakuya sits up bleary-eyed.

"Ugh," he says. Part of his hair is sticking up, in a cute tuft that Ryo can't laugh at - only because his own hair is likely in the same state.

He does sit up himself though. He doesn't drop the covers but he does point towards the light switch near the door. Sakuya grumbles but stumbles across their room anyway. He's rubbing his cheek in an attempt to get some of the criss-cross red lines to disappear.

The light is bright enough when it comes on that Ryo has to squeeze his eyes shut for a minute. When he eventually opens them he expects Sakuya to have disappeared into the bathroom to wash his face. Instead, he's still hovering by the door, looking caught between sleepiness and a wrinkle of his nose.

"I think you had a nosebleed," he tells Ryo, and then stumbles out of the room with his free hand moving on to try and tame his hair.

Ryo blinks. Watches him leave and then drops his covers. He instinctively reaches up to brush his nose with the back of his hand, but it comes away dry and without the crusting of blood he would have expected. It's only when he turns around that he can see what Sakuya was talking about.

There are three drops of blood on his pillow. Each is only about a centimetre wide and an inch apart from another. They're old enough that the bright red colour has oxidised to a rusty brown. For a moment, Ryo even wonders whether they'd been there when he went to sleep, and only had been noticed in the morning.

He presses a finger to one. He's not sure what he's expecting. Nothing happens.

Sion's alarm rings again, which is a sign that he really does need to get up. Ryo leaves the pillow and the odd drops of blood behind him as something to deal with later. He enters the bathroom just as Sakuya lifts his face from the water from the faucet, and falls forward to leaning against him.

"Get off," Sakuya tells him, without any heat in his tone.

"You're warm," Ryo tells him right back. He hums when Sakuya shoves him away, momentarily fighting to wrap his arms around him, but gives the game up quickly. They pass each other so Ryo can wash his own face and teeth, and blink the rest of the sleep from his eyes.

There is a tiny layer of dried blood beneath his nose. It disappears quickly under the warm soapy water. The humidity in the apartment must be changing with the change in the seasons. Their room is probably too dry.

It takes him less time than expected to finish up, probably because he'd woken up slightly before his first alarm. Then it's quick to stumble back to the bedroom, pull on a set of clothes that no one other than the stylists will notice - considering he'll be changed out of them the minute they arrive at the shoot - and he can head to the kitchen.

Sion's already used their beat-up coffee maker in the corner. The room smells like strong caffeine; dark and rich and nutty, and Ryo's nose wrinkles when he walks in.

"Too strong," he mutters to himself. Sakuya isn't here, which means he's probably skipping grabbing anything and just waiting for what they're given at the photoshoot. Avoiding any bloating the easy way.

But Ryo's stomach is too empty and the car journey they have ahead of them is long. "We don't have anything to eat!"

Other than ramen and snacks and drinks cans. Most of the actual food for cooking is stored at Daeyoung, Riku and Yushi's place, and they've gotten into the habit of just ordering delivery whenever they need anything else. They'd been given a set of pastries from a make-up artist the other day, but...

"Saku! Did you eat all the pastries?"

Sakuya's laugh echoes through the dorm loud enough that Ryo's huff is drowned out. Not skipping breakfast like he'd assumed, then.

It's not worth the argument when they barely have any time before they need to leave. Ryo crosses the room to the fridge, hoping there'll be something in there instead, only-

Something smells bad.

Like, bad bad.

Ryo rears back and holds his hand over his nose immediately. The fridge is so empty that it only takes him a second to identify what must have gone off - there are a couple of eggs in the door. Ryo's pretty sure they hadn't smelt like that yesterday, but there's no mistaking the sour stench of rot now.

It clings to the edges of the fridge. He can almost imagine the clinical white being stained yellow, putrid instead of butter, something impossible to clean lingering in the crevices.

It'll take a while to air the smell out, at least, and-

"Eugh! Ryo!"

Ryo straightens up at the sound of Sion's voice. He points to the fridge, to the eggs in the door, "It wasn't me! The eggs have gone off!"

As expected, Sion makes a show of ignoring him. He wrinkles his nose and then bats his hand towards him. But he approaches anyway, gagging slightly as he sees the eggs in question. "We only bought those... a couple of days ago! How are they this off already?"

"Maybe we just don't eat enough food actually from the fridge."

"We use the fridge all the time," Sion tells him. "For drinks," he adds, "But still."

Ryo shrugs. "I guess no one opened it yesterday. Or they were off when we bought them. Hyung, I'm not touching them, they can't live there."

He aims his best puppy-dog pleading eyes towards Sion, who thankfully is already moving. "Yeah, yeah, hyung will do it for you." He's grabbed a ziploc plastic bag and uses it like a glove to pull both eggs inside, then flips it around to seal. It goes into their trash immediately, but just as Ryo had suspected, the smell lingers.

"We're going to need to clean up," Ryo declares. He pokes at a couple more items to make sure they haven't also mysteriously expired in the night. The fridge beeps at him that the temperature has warmed too much, so he gives up and closes the door.

On the other side of the room, Sion slides the kitchen window open just in time for Sakuya to enter.

"It stinks in here!"

"Whoever smelt it dealt it," Sion tells him easily.

Sakuya frowns and is about to retort, hand hovering like he's about to pinch his nose, but a knock at the door signals that their time is up. Ryo only gets to run a hand through his hair before they're bundled out into the car waiting on the street.

Yushi flinches silently as they pile inside, sparking a whole new round of complaints and exclamations. Sion nudges Ryo as they do up their seatbelts. "Did you get anything in the end?"

Riku turns to look at him, craning his neck across the back of the seat. His skin is unfairly perfect, blemish-free even without make up, and his dark hair has been pushed back to reveal his forehead. "Oh? Ryo, you didn't have anything to eat this morning?"

He's like a worried mother. Or an older sister - Ryo would know. His eyes widen with concern even as his neck twists in a way that can't be comfortable. If he were sitting closer, Ryo would be getting his cheek pinched.

"It's not a big deal," he grumbles, avoiding the pinch that Riku tries to give anyway, normal limb direction be damned. "I'll get something at the photoshoot."

Riku hums his disapproval in a way that says he'll be watching. Ryo actually is planning on grabbing something, so his concern is slightly misplaced, but appreciated all the same.

The subject gets dropped for the rest of the car ride. And once they've arrived at the shoot, it's impossible to think about anything other than hair styling and make-up, and costumes and the flash of the camera.

He sits with Daeyoung and smiles at the staff. They pose him with Yushi, and by the time all six of them come in for the group shots, he's forgotten all about anything other than the clips they're recording for YouTube and how not to mess up his hair.

It's not a long day compared to some of the days they've had, but it isn't short either. After the photoshoot they're shuttled to a radio show appearance. And it's only after that that they're finally able to go back to the dorms.

The sky outside is dark and starless. There's a heavy layer of cloud that prevents even the moon from shining. It's warm in the day but there's a distinct coolness to the air once the sun has set - not quite cold enough for a thin coat, but not far off it either.

They'd eaten after the radio show and before being dropped off, so all Ryo wants to do is shower and crawl back into bed. He ignores the older members making plans in the car in favour of leaning his head against the window. Daeyoung lends him his jacket for a pillow despite the fact he probably needs it for warmth, and Ryo can't put up a good enough protest to deny him.

The car pulling up outside their building is a heavy relief. All six of them trudge to the elevator and then to the hallway where they split off. Sakuya bee-lines to the door almost immediately and Sion isn't far behind him. Ryo has to wedge a foot inside to stop it from closing whilst he untangles Daeyoung's jacket from around his waist.

"Did you not sleep last night?" Daeyoung jokes as Ryo fumbles with the zip. It's somehow gotten caught within itself, and the lighting in the hallway isn't good enough to catch the details.

"I slept fine," Ryo says. "I even had a dream and everything. Saku said my nose was bleeding in the morning though, so maybe that's something."

He finally frees himself, and hands the jacket back over to Daeyoung, who nods. "Humidity changes with the seasons. Try and get some more rest tonight."

"I will."

With that, Daeyoung waves goodbye and Ryo is finally free to step inside the apartment. It's cooler than he'd thought it would be. They're usually too warm because of the heat seeping through the lower levels of the building, but Ryo almost shivers as he steps forward and takes his shoes off, balancing with one hand on the doorframe to the kitchen.

Maybe it's because he's missing Daeyoung's jacket? But that had been wrapped around his waist. It wouldn't have made that much difference to the temperature.

It takes him a moment to realise where the weird feeling is coming from. The fact that his arms are covered in goosebumps and there's a strange coldness to where he's standing - there's a literal breeze running through the apartment.

The window in the kitchen is propped open.

It's only a few inches, but the temperature outside has dropped enough that the difference is notable. Ryo steps closer and immediately shivers as the breeze blows once again, pulling at his clothes and making an abandoned pile of nearby sheet music flutter.

It's a good thing the paper is being held down by an empty soda can, otherwise they'd be across the room by now. Or maybe if they had, someone would have noticed the open window before they left in the first place.

"Hey!" Ryo calls over his shoulder, "You left the window open! Hyung!"

If Sion was the one to open it, he should also be the one to close it.

Ryo doesn't have much hope of that happening though, and his suspicions are confirmed when Sion only calls back, "Don't hey me!"

He's only here to grab a jacket and some ramen from the kitchen anyway. Then he's going back to the other dorm - to Riku and Yushi and Daeyoung - for a late night chat. It would take him approximately ten extra seconds to close the window once he heads through here. That doesn't mean he'll do it.

Ryo makes sure to roll his eyes. Whatever. This will be good ammo for whenever Sion next decides to tease him on a variety show. Oh, hyung, but you've been leaving windows open all day and making your maknaes do the work to close them .

It won't work. Sion has a way of shrugging comments like that off, turning them around with a grin and a nuzzle, or an arm around the shoulders. Ryo will get his revenge one day, but it won't be any time soon.

He takes another step closer to the window. His mind is still far away, thinking about how long Sion's taking to choose a jacket, what Sakuya might be doing in their room, the fact that it's getting even colder in the breeze. He isn't paying proper attention.

He doesn't notice the bird until his hands are already pressed up against the cold glass.

It is cold. Colder than it should be. They'd been outside only a few minutes ago, and Ryo certainly hadn't been shivering then. But now it's all he can do to pretend his flinch is because of the sudden drop to freezing, like his teeth aren't chattering.

The room is suddenly very, very cold.

There is a dead bird outside their apartment.

It hadn't been there this morning. Ryo would have noticed. It's bright yellow and the feathers catch the street lights beneath the small iron grid the body is lying upon, still as golden as the LED lights.

It's just lying there.

Ryo's palms are still pressing against the glass, but he can't pull away. The bird is small and crumpled and it has its neck bent at an angle that cannot be right.

And-

There is something wrong.

It is a bird, but Ryo cannot look away in fear of seeing - he's not sure, something else out of the corner of his eye. The shape is wrong. It's like pinpricks in his skull, tiny needles pressing in, every time he looks at the shadow on the metal grill and part of his brain tells him that the darkness doesn't fit where it should stretch around the body.

There is nothing he can pinpoint as being wrong. Not in the sense that the beak stretches out too far, or the wings are at impossible angles, or that there's something uncanny about the glassy eyes. It's a dead bird. It's not unlike the ones he's seen at the side of the roads in Seoul. There shouldn't be anything more than that.

But he looks and his head hurts.

There is nothing wrong with the bird, except for the fact there is very clearly - so clearly, his thundering heart and the sudden coldness and the choking feeling of nausea like his legs are going to slip out from beneath his body - something wrong.

It is the bird from his dreams, if the dream had been a nightmare. Wrong in a way that doesn't make logical sense, but terrifying all the same because the look of the bird digs into some ancient primal terror, the instinct that screams at him that the thing shaped like a bird is very clearly not.

He's not even sure how long it's been. Only a couple of seconds must have passed, because he's oddly aware of the shuddering intake of breath when he inhales. But his eyes ache like it's been an eternity without blinking. He can only move like he's caught on a camera low frame speed, all his effort to pulling his hands away when the movement is stuttered.

There are feathers caught in the window's seal.

Other than the imprint of his hands, where his fingers had once been warm against the window, there is not a single other mark against the glass.

"Ryo? What are you looking at?"

Sion's voice comes from right next to him, and the sound of it comes like a jolt. Ryo pulls back on instinct. His line of sight with the bird breaks, and instead he turns his head to see Sion standing next to him.

His eyebrows are raised. One hand hangs in the air, and even though Ryo has now clearly heard him, he still lifts it to wave in front of his eyes like he's checking that he's paying attention. "You were a million miles away."

He's laughing. Sion is always laughing, that's what makes him so easy to come to, there's always a sense of comfort that extends from his warm embrace. But if Ryo looks carefully, his eyes are a little stony. Harder than expected, considering his lighthearted tone. He's concerned beneath his air of carelessness.

His jacket is abandoned on the kitchen table a few steps away. Ryo wonders how long he'd been calling, for him to have left it behind.

Ryo swallows. "I was looking outside," he says, attempting to match Sion's tone. It's impossible to tell whether it works. It certainly sounds strained to his own ears, but being an idol has taught him how to swallow down things like that. He's not on a stage now, but the lessons remained. "Hyung, you left the window open. There's a bird."

"A bird?" Sion echoes, "Inside?"

His head whips around, like he's seeing something imaginary across the room. He's expecting to see a pigeon making a nest amongst the drinks cans on the shelves, or a magpie pulling out the snack wrappers from the bin.

"There's a bird inside?" Sakuya hollers from down the hall.

"Ryo saw one!"

It sounds like a mini elephant down the hall as Sakuya thunders to come and join them, drowning out Ryo's protests that he hadn't said that at all. The front of his hair is pulled into a little tuft when he appears and he's wearing an oversized pink t-shirt. He scans the room eagerly. "Where is it?"

Sion looks at Ryo like he's still expecting him to point it out, and it's all Ryo can do to huff in frustration. "There isn't a bird inside! It was outside, I think it hit the glass."

"That's not exciting," Sakuya tells him. It's not Ryo's fault he got worked up about something that doesn't exist, and Ryo's just about to tell him that when Sion pokes him in the cheek.

"Ryo, there's no bird."

Ryo turns. He looks down, to where the window is still open because he hadn't closed it after all of that, and to where the bird is lying on the small metal grill outside of the apartment.

Where the bird was lying.

"What?"

Sion is right. There is no bird. The space is completely empty. There'd been no trace of a collision on the glass anyway, but now Ryo's eyes widen as he looks for any hint he hadn't been imagining it. Even the feathers he'd been so sure were stuck have disappeared.

He'd only looked away for ten seconds. Twenty at most. How is it possible, for the bird to have vanished just like that?

"Eh?" He says, "It was right there." He points, but that only makes the absence of a bird even more stark.

Sakuya has disappeared, bored and with more exciting things to get to. Sion shifts his weight from foot to foot, itching with the want to join the others in their own apartment already. "Maybe it just flew away," he says, and it could sound dismissive if he weren't Sion.

But he is. So instead it sounds warm, and as he says it he pulls Ryo into a hug around his neck, locking him close to his chest and using his free hand to ruffle his hair violently.

"Get off- " Ryo tells him, using his elbows to escape and pull away.

He looks back to the window. There's no bird. There's no sign that a bird was ever there, let alone that one had been there a minute ago.

Maybe it hadn't been as dead as it looked - but thinking about that makes Ryo think about what it had looked like, and that gives him such an odd feeling in his stomach that he has to stop.

Sion slides the window shut.

It's like a weight has been lifted that Ryo didn't even realise was pressing down on him. When Sion turns away to pick up his jacket again, Ryo finds it's suddenly easy to turn as well, stepping away from the window like he'd never been drawn to it in the first place.

"It probably flew away," he says out loud.

Sion glares at him with no heat to the expression. "I just said that!" He complains, and when Ryo pretends not to hear him, he gets another violent hair-ruffle for his effort.

That's it. There's no bird and there's no longer any open window. That means there's no longer any reason to stay in the kitchen.

As soon as Sion disappears out of the dorms, Ryo heads to go and find Sakuya or something. Once he gets inevitably shoved off, he'll watch a film on his tablet or something. Catch up with some sleep.

It's oddly warm when he steps into their bedroom. Like even when the window had been closed, Ryo simply hadn't noticed that the cold breeze hadn't stopped with it.

Chapter Text

If Ryo dreams about the bird again, he doesn't remember it.

Comeback season is drawing to a close. The stretch of non-stop performances and photoshoots and events feels like it lasts for far longer than it must in reality. He loves seeing the fans and he loves the adrenaline that seeing their new album release gives him, but he's also looking forward to a few days of rest.

Their nights are still short on sleep. After the night with the bird, Ryo is pretty sure he must dream again, he just doesn't remember a single moment of it. It's not even like he wakes up clutching at fragments of scenes he'd been so vividly experiencing moments before, or opens his eyes to the distinct feeling that he's forgetting something.

He just doesn't dream.

He wakes up to the alarm and the knowledge that he has half an hour to be up and out - into a car where he can try to catch maybe twenty more minutes more. He wakes up to Sakuya shaking him. On one memorable occasion, he opens his eyes to see Sion holding an ice cube and wearing an evil grin. He thinks he's really overslept then as he twists away to avoid Sion's cold and damp hands, but it turns out Sion's sadistic enough to have purposefully woken up early for that exact purpose.

He's gotten away easy though. He's small enough to avoid Sion's clingy hands, and when the ice cube inevitably gets slipped down the back of his top, it's already half melted. Sakuya, on the other hand, knows that there's a prank equal-in-size coming his way soon. And even if he's expecting it, there's nothing he can do to avoid it.

So Ryo doesn't dream about the bird again. He wakes up at his alarm, he shuffles out of bed to the bathroom, and he's greeted by Yushi.

"Eh? Yushi?"

Yushi is washing his hands. He looks up at Ryo and then looks back down to finish the job. As if he isn't standing in a bathroom that isn't his own. As if this is a totally normal occurrence, which - fine, it isn't exactly unheard of, but it's not an explanation either!

"What are you doing here?"

Yushi looks up again. He stops the faucet and shakes his hands towards the basin once. "Washing my hands."

He glances down to the bowl again, which is exactly how much warning Ryo has before he starts flicking the remaining water in his direction. It's only because Ryo had already started moving that he doesn't end up with a face-full. It ends up soaking his shoulder instead, and Yushi laughs as Ryo pulls a face.

Standing slightly further down the hallway gives him a better idea of what's going on. Riku and Daeyoung are in the kitchen along with Sakuya. Ryo could have sworn he'd seen Sakuya still in bed, but he'd also been half-asleep and bleary-eyed, so he probably just saw some discarded pyjamas that looked vaguely humanoid.

"Was I the last one up?" Ryo says. He hasn't seen Sion yet, but if Riku is over then he's likely not still sleeping.

"You're a sleepy-head," Yushi tells him. "Did you have a nice dream, at least?"

"I don't think I dreamt at all."

"Really? Sakuya said you were talking in your sleep."

"He did? That's not true, I don't talk in my sleep, that's-"

He's cut off by the appearance of Sion, who uses the chance to pull Ryo into a headlock and drag him towards the table. Ryo manages to escape but Sion's attempt at drawing him closer had already been successful. He's now standing in front of a bowl of soup, so he collapses into the nearest chair and pulls it towards him.

"Eat up," Daeyoung tells him.

Ryo wrinkles his nose. "What are you doing here as well? I thought we had a schedule today." They'd been supposed to perform at a small show. They should have been in the cars and on their way to meet the stylists by now.

Sion gestures to the windows. "Bad weather. There was a power cut near the location and they're not going to be able to sort it out in time. Performance has been cancelled, so we've got a free morning instead."

"And they only told us after we'd already woken up," Riku mutters.

"You could have gone back to sleep!"

He shrugs, stretching long arms out. His skin is still tan from the summer, despite the stylists' efforts to lather him in sunscreen at every possible moment. Personally, Ryo thinks the colour looks good on him. It'll fade soon now they're entering the colder months anyway, and it makes him glow in the light of the kitchen. "We were already dressed. Plus it feels like aaages since we last hung out here."

Ryo looks beyond him to the window. It's raining. He's not sure how he hadn't noticed the noise before - it's the kind of storm that thunders and lights up the sky in flashes. It pounds against the glass and washes out the whole world. By the sounds of it, this is the tail end of the worst of the weather, if it's already knocked out electricity in other parts of the city.

"Woah," he says. It's the kind of weather that makes the whole day seem dark. Like it's the middle of the night even though the clocks declare it to be the morning. "Kind of cool, though."

He looks down at his soup, ready to take a sip, only to find that the bowl is almost empty.

He can see the rim from beneath the thin layer of broth left. There's the residue of foam up the sides and he's certain that it's the same full bowl he'd taken only a few seconds ago - only it's now almost completely empty. "Huh? Did someone eat my soup?"

Half the kitchen is distracted. Sion's pinching Sakuya's cheeks and Daeyoung is laughing at them. Yushi is half watching as well, though he's staying silent, and that leaves Riku as the only one who actually hears him.

"Yeah, you," Riku says. He looks from the bowl to Ryo's face and his expression softens, going from teasing to something slightly more genuine when he sees Ryo's confusion. "I can get you another bowl if you like? Maybe eat this one a little slower."

"I-" Ryo starts to say, but he stops before the words make it out. He was about to insist it. Ask whether Sion hadn't been leaning over his shoulder without him noticing, or swapping the bowl whilst he'd looked out the window. But it looks like his playfight with Sakuya has been going on for a little while, so when would he have had the time? And Riku isn't laughing either. He'd be laughing if he knew something was up.

Worst of all, Ryo can taste the broth in his mouth. His tongue tastes distinctly like the soup, despite the fact that he can't remember taking a single bite. He's not as hungry as he would have expected for the morning.

"I guess I thought I had more left," he says instead. "It's fine. I don't need another bowl."

The confusion has his stomach turning. He looks into the bowl and he can see his reflection peering back at him. It isn't the first time he's eaten something whilst barely recognising what's going into his mouth - they've had enough sleep-deprived meals in the middle of comeback activities for it to be somewhat familiar.

He just... didn't think he was that tired now. 

But his mouth tastes like soup when he runs his tongue over the back of his teeth, and the way Riku is looking at him says he saw him eating it. There's the distinct possibility that Ryo stared out of the window for longer than he'd realised, and just ended up finishing the bowl on auto-pilot. 

That must be what happened. It churns something in his chest, all the soup being beaten up with how his heart had dropped, so he pushes the bowl away from him. The spoon he'd been holding clinks against it when he lets it go. A bowl of soup might not be much, but he's not hungry at all any more.

Riku leans in with a distraction before he can linger on it for too much longer. The fight between Sion and Sakuya comes to an end when Sakuya almost trips over Yushi's leg. Daeyoung helps tidy up the bowls that had been abandoned on the table in favour of things more fun, and Ryo ends up standing next to him to dry them. 

The morning - unexpectedly free - runs faster from that point. It doesn't seem like long at all before their manager is reappearing and ushering them back into the cars for their next schedule. They have to pull the hoods of their coats tight over their faces to avoid getting soaked as they climb inside, but the weather has calmed down by the afternoon.

By the time they're returning back, the sky is completely cloudless - the only remnants of the bad weather being the puddles on the sidewalks and the heavy moisture in the air. 

It isn't that late when they get in. Ryo sits on the floor of Riku's room whilst he eats, an anime playing distantly on someone's tablet. He stays there until it's late, and then creeps back to his own dorm. The sun is just setting outside. It's not that late, but he climbs into bed anyway and settles down to play a phone game to relax.

He must drift off at some point. He wakes up with a start - phone dropping from his hand, grip loosened by sleep - and his neck aching from the odd position. The lights in the room have been switched off. Sakuya is fast asleep in his own bed and the dorm is so quiet that Ryo swears he could hear a mosquito batting against the window.

He stretches. The position had been so comfortable when he'd first buried into his pillows, but now he's aware of himself; it's like his limbs have been tight with discomfort for far longer than he'd realised. Even Tonton by his head has slumped slightly, and Ryo sits up with a wince to re-right the stuffed animal.

The sensible thing would be to plug his phone in and just turn right back over. Ryo completes the first step with semi-ease - fumbling in the darkness for the charger still doesn't take long with how much this is a practiced skill.

Then he becomes aware of how dry his throat is.

He mustn't have drunk enough water with his food. It's the kind of thirst that isn't easily ignored, he knows it'll only get worse if he ignores it now. He's already awake anyway. It'll be five minutes maximum to get to the kitchen, and maybe he'll stretch some of the soreness from his back at the same time.

Ryo grabs the cup from his bedside. Careful not to make much noise, he shuffles out of the bedroom and closes the door behind him. He's still rubbing his eyes when he gets halfway down the corridor and realises there's someone in the bathroom again . 

This time, it's Daeyoung. 

He's not looking at the door despite the fact that it's wide open. Instead, he's looking into the mirror.

Ryo shivers, and then wonders why. The fact that it's nighttime has put an odd lens on the situation. He'd already been slightly on edge before stumbling across someone he wasn't expecting to see - and now his mind is looking to make connections that don't exist.

The light in the bathroom doesn't have a shade on it, so it just hangs as a single bulb from the ceiling. It's something they keep saying they'll get around to fixing and then never actually do - since it provides light all the same, and Ryo's not sure he trusts any of their members enough to attempt it in the first place.

Maybe Daeyoung. Ryo's not sure he's ever seen him use this bathroom, when he comes to think of it. They usually spend time together in the other dorm. A light bulb hanging from the ceiling seems like the kind of thing that Daeyoung would notice and then also somehow know how to fix.

He doesn't offer to fix it now.

The night time and the single bulb cast long shadows. They flicker slightly, and when Ryo looks up he sees that the bulb itself is flickering. It likely always has, he's just never noticed before this moment. The rest of the bathroom is obscured by the door, or is hidden completely in darkness where the light doesn't reach.

Daeyoung is looking in the mirror. It's fixed right above the sink and Ryo can see that maybe he'd been washing his hands before this. The faucet is still slightly on. It's leaking a steady drip-drip of water into the sink, strangely loud against the porcelain and in the otherwise silent apartment.

"What are you looking at?" Ryo asks.

Daeyoung startles. He turns and for a second the shadows illuminate his features so oddly that he could be someone else. The moment passes and it settles, just a split-second thought in Ryo's mind, but it's enough to make him take a tiny step back almost without realising it.

"What?"

"What are you looking at?" Ryo repeats. "In the mirror."

Daeyoung looks at him for a moment. He turns to the mirror again, then turns back. It's so silent and odd that Ryo can't help but stare. He doesn't realise he's on edge until Daeyoung's expression screws up and he laughs familiarly, and the wave of relief that floods him is almost overwhelming.

"In the mirror?" Daeyoung echoes, "Ah, I was wondering whether I looked puffy. Or whether it's just the lighting."

"You don't look puffy, hyung, the lighting is terrible in here." It is, the shadows stretch as the bulb swings, and it illuminates all the odd parts in ways that don't quite make sense to be illuminated. "We don't have schedules tomorrow either, so even if you are puffy it's fine."

Daeyoung nods. "You're right," but he looks back over to the mirror anyway. It's not like he's ever been one of the members more worried about his looks, but when they're idols with their faces plastered all over the internet, it's hard to avoid every comment that tears them apart.

It can be hard to ignore those thoughts sometimes. Especially at night, and especially in the awful lighting of a bathroom.

"But hyung," Ryo says, eager to change the subject and also move onto what's been nagging him this whole time, "What are you doing here anyway?"

Daeyoung blinks at him. "Here? In... the bathroom?"

"No, in our dorm! You don't live here, remember?"

Daeyoung stares a little longer. His eyes are strong, they always are, but they seem darker now and they're looking at Ryo like he's said something wrong. It was supposed to be a joke. Had he not said it lightheartedly enough?

But eventually Daeyoung just smiles. He puts his hand up a little awkwardly and Ryo feels every bone in his body relax again. "Ah, we didn't have any soap. It didn't feel right to wash my hands without it - especially before bed." He hesitates for a moment, "Did I wake you up?"

Ryo shakes his head and holds out his glass. "Just thirsty."

Wordlessly, Daeyoung steps to the side and gestures towards the bathroom faucet. It's still dripping and Ryo wrinkles his nose at the thought of drinking there instead of taking the ten more steps to the kitchen. "Ew, no! I'll walk you out and then go to the kitchen."

"I see."

Daeyoung steps out of the bathroom. He reaches towards the light but something in Ryo gets him to tell him to keep it on before his hand can find the switch.

They walk in silence to the door.

"You should go back to bed," Daeyoung says, suddenly. He's talking too loudly. It's the middle of the night and everyone else is sleeping. The dorm feels silent in a way that is settled and suffocated at the same time.

He thinks he can hear the hum of the electricity in the walls. The dripping of the faucet that's still on in the bathroom, and the wind against the windows.

"I'm thirsty," Ryo says.

"You should sleep," Daeyoung tells him. "It's good for you. You should rest."

He sounds flat. The kitchen is dark without the light from the bathroom - because as depressing as the single bulb may be, it still spills into the hallway from the open door and provides the only illumination stretching to the front door.

It's dark enough that Daeyoung's face is completely shadowed. Ryo's grip on the glass is too hard. His hand is shaking as he sets it down onto a countertop, and it clacks noisily against the surface, betraying a motion that otherwise would have been hidden in the darkness.

"You should as well, hyung."

Daeyoung nods. He doesn't say anything. Ryo opens the door for him and his eyes are drawn to the window at the end of the corridor. From this angle, the night sky above Seoul can be seen. The city itself is as bright as ever, all lights and LEDs and cars still racing down the streets. In contrast, the sky is completely empty and starless. The moon must be behind them somewhere; not a single feature is visible other than the expanse of black.

When he looks back, Daeyoung is gone.

Ryo gets the feeling he's forgetting about something. After a moment of standing out there wondering, he shivers. The locks on the door only take a few moments to do up again, and then he heads straight back to the warm covers of his bed.

His feet are cold against the floor. The dorm is dark. It makes him think of things hidden where he cannot see them, and even if Ryo's never really been afraid of bugs, he still wouldn't like to meet a spider here.

Sakuya is still sleeping when he enters their room. He doesn't even turn over as Ryo climbs back into bed, and the sound of his heavy breathing doesn't stutter as Ryo falls asleep.

This time, he does dream.

He is the bird again. His arms are covered in feathers, because they are wings stretching out to his sides. Except - he pushes them out and he can feel his fingers, and when he pulls them down to look at them, he can only see pale skin.

He is a bird, but he is human. He is supposed to have wings - that's how he is here, so high in the night sky and flying miles above the ground - but he only has arms. He cannot fly without wings, so instead Ryo looks at his outstretched fingers and he starts falling.

Chapter Text

It doesn't take long after that for Ryo to realise that something is wrong.

It seems like every night he falls asleep and his arms are covered with feathers that can't keep him flying. He has just enough time to notice the bright yellow adorning his shoulders before he starts plummeting to the ground all over again. His stomach drops from beneath him and his surroundings dull to an endless expanse of black - so he doesn't even know how long to fall before he hits the ground.

It should come as consolation that he never actually does hit the ground. He always jerks up out of sleep before he can make any sort of collision, though his racing heart attempts to say otherwise.

Except - he ends up falling less than twenty minutes after he starts dreaming. He closes his eyes and it seems like he's immediately growing feathers and being thrown into the dark. When he sits up, scared and sick from a collision that never actually occurs - it's only been an hour since he pulled his covers over his body. And then he has to make the decision about whether he's going to try to sleep again, or whether he can't bear it.

It's never a question of whether he's going to have the dream. By the third night, that's not something he has to think about.

He will have the dream, and there is nothing he can do about it.

Ryo tries. He catches naps and sets alarms for forty minutes, so he's jerked awake before his body can do it for him. He rests his head against the members' shoulders because it's never quite as bad when he's touching someone else, but most of the time they have their own things to do - they eventually shrug him off and he wakes up falling all the same.

It doesn't take long for the exhaustion to start to catch up with him, either. 

The naps aren't quite enough. He can only curl up in chairs a certain number of times before someone jokingly asks what time he'd gone to bed the night before. And Ryo doesn't want to bother anyone else with the fact he's having trouble sleeping lately, so it's all he can do to laugh it off.

He buys remedies that declare they're guaranteed to help with nightmares. He makes sure he actually is taking the vitamins his parents send him, just in case his overactive imagination is being caused by some sort of deficiency. He stops snacking right before going to bed. He leaves headphones on, like the quietened sound of music will seep into his dreams and remind him it isn't real. 

Nothing works. In a week, he tries every idea that he can come up with and every idea that the internet suggests. 

They take a trip to the practice rooms to rehearse a group reel that the management is sure will do well. It's low-key enough that the six of them are left in front of the mirrors to figure out the choreography on their own, but there's a deadline by the end of the day - so it's not quite as fun as when they really are left to their own devices. 

 Except what's already starting as a bad, tired day quickly gets worse. After the first few rounds of practice, something in the full-size mirror that stretches across one entire wall of the room catches Ryo's eye. 

It's odd.

The practice room is well lit but the floor and walls are dark. It makes his dark clothing blend in slightly - the only colour in his outfit is a pale shock of white where his face stares back at him, the thin strips of his ankles above his feet and his hands flat by his sides.

It could be a trick of the light. His jacket is heavy and he's tired, and surely it would make sense for his mind to be playing tricks on him like this. A slight lag between his eyes and his brain.

But he raises his hand to check, and his heart seizes with the sick realisation that it's so, so clear.

His body is lagging behind.

The mirror should show him raising his hand up and down, lifting in time with the movement of his body. He should be able to watch himself when he's dancing and pick up on his exact motions as he does them. There's always a sense of reliance on other people when they practice like this; watching the others in the reflection and using that to improve his own timing. But that doesn't mean he never pays attention to his own face staring back at him.

Now, he raises his hand and the reflection stands still.

For a second at least. He's not going crazy and imagining something completely different to reality. That would be absurd and he really would think he'd lost his mind - and he'd have probably needed to report it to the SM-employed psychologists immediately.

There's a lag. His reflection keeps up with him enough that it had taken him this long to notice what was happening, but falls behind to the point where he now cannot unsee it. He waves his hand and a split-second later his reflection does as well, but it isn't perfect. He blinks, and by the time his eyes are open he can see the closed lashes on his face in the mirror.

"Woah," he says, taking a step back. He looks up to the lights hanging from the ceiling. They don't look any different to normal, but he hasn't exactly paid much attention to the lights in this practice room before. "I think something weird is going on."

Sion looks up. Daeyoung and Yushi are still reviewing on the phone, paying enough attention that even though Yushi glances up as well, it's only for a second. Sakuya has disappeared but the door at the back is open, so he'd probably lost a game of rock paper scissors to buy a round of drinks. Riku is also facing the mirror, but staring down at his feet as he tries to get some of the foot work down. 

"Did they change the lights in here? It's making the mirrors look weird."

Sion looks in the mirror. He doesn't see what he's expecting, since he then gets up and comes over to Ryo. Ryo lets him. He even steps out of the way and lets Sion stand in the same position he'd been in. His reflection does the same a moment later. 

"What looks weird?"

Ryo raises his hand. His reflection is slow in the same way as before, "Look," so he turns to Sion expectantly.

Sion just frowns. "What, do you mean they're flickering or something? I can't see anything."

Ryo opens his mouth. Something stops him before he can utter a single word. There's no way that Sion would have missed the slow of Ryo's reflection staring directly at it and looking for something out of place. Even if he'd been focused on the lights, he wouldn't have missed it. 

Which means...

Something cold curls up in Ryo's gut. He's reminded with a sudden horrible feeling about when he'd pointed out the dead bird on the space outside the window. He'd seen it and he'd been so convinced that everyone else could see it too - only for Sion to walk up and make it suddenly disappear. 

He'd convinced himself that the whole interaction was something he'd dreamt and mistakenly confused with real life. The bird had been the same colour as the feathers in his dreams. It would have made more sense to be a dream than... something he had entirely imagined. 

If that's what's happening here- no, it can't be. Twice would be concerning. This isn't anything like a whole dead bird, this is a trick of the lights in the practice room. He's tired and his brain is struggling to catch up. 

That's all. Anything more would be something to be worried about, and there is nothing wrong other than Ryo struggling to sleep. Once this passes and he can get through a night again, it'll all go away. He just needs to keep trying. 

He swallows. He can see the way his throat bobs in his reflection a second later. 

"Yeah, you can't see it?" He points up and he refuses to see the way that his reflection follows. "Maybe it's because your eyes are old, hyung."

Sion rounds on him, mirror forgotten, and Sakuya appears to throw a bag of drinks to the floor at just the right time. Riku stops practicing to come and search through them, and even Yushi and Daeyoung put the phone down ready to take a proper break. 

Ryo's heart is still racing five minutes later when they start up again, though. It's harder to dance when his reflection is intent on showing the image exactly off-beat, and he has to pretend that he's staring out at a crowd instead. 

He doesn't think he's noticeably that much worse than usual, but Yushi does glance at him silently a couple of times. His lips purse but it's Yushi and he doesn't like conflict, so he doesn't say anything. 

When Sion eventually calls it and they review the final footage, Ryo's nowhere near as happy with his performance as usual. His limbs look clumsy. The dark room makes the bags under his eyes stand out, even though he'd already applied concealer and the practice was supposed to be minimal make-up in the first place. 

His brow is slightly furrowed. He'd had to concentrate to look past the mirror. His movements aren't sharp and he almost loses balance at one point, though he'd managed to hide it at the last moment and save himself from falling on his ass. 

The only relief comes that the other members are also so focused on themselves that they don't look away from their own performance. Sion sits up and grins, and the final few takes get sent off to the media team for them to choose from and post. 

If he'd been exhausted when they'd arrived at the practice room, it's bone-deep by the time they return from the dorms. Sion shouts about what delivery he's planning to order, but Ryo only has the energy to heat up a packet of instant rice in the microwave.

It's plain. He almost burns his tongue because he takes a bite too early, and after that it tastes even more like nothing than before. His eyes start to close by themselves when he gets halfway through. He chokes through the rest so he can start to crawl to his bed a few seconds earlier.

He doesn't shower. He doesn't even plan on tugging on a pair of pyjamas - he'll sleep in his outside clothes and wash his bedding tomorrow. 

He doesn't care about the bird or the dreams. At this point, an hour of sleep sounds like a blessing, anything to make the post-practice exhaustion hit a little kinder.

Ryo shuffles into the bedroom. Sakuya is sitting in his bed, hair still tied up and playing some sort of game on his phone. The lights aren't off, but Ryo is tired enough that he doesn't think that's really going to make a difference. 

He goes to take a step forward when he sees the feather on the floor. "Did you put that there?"

"No? I didn't do anything?"

Sakuya only glances up from his game. He's still focusing too hard to actually pay more than a second of attention to what Ryo's pointing at. His fingers were still moving even as he'd briefly scanned the floor.

But that second should have been enough. Their floor isn't clean, sure, but it's also not completely covered in clothes. The clutter is organised into piles and shelves and into boxes more than it is just left on the floor. They've got a completely empty walkway so they can always find their way to their beds, even on their most exhausted and sleep-deprived nights.

The feather isn't hidden. It doesn't blend in with the floor. It's bright yellow and almost glowing against the harsh room lights, and soft against the hard ground. It spins slightly in some unfelt draught.

"Look," Ryo says. If Sakuya hadn't seen it when he'd been looking almost directly at it, he must not have been paying attention at all. "The feather, I mean. Stop playing your game and look!"

He points to it. His outstretched finger feels accusatory. It's just a feather, after all. He'd written the bird outside the window off as a figment of his imagination, a leftover part of his dream bleeding into the real world. This is more likely carried in from a performance outfit. It had probably been caught in some corner of their room and floated down whilst they weren't paying attention.

Sakuya's eyes look up. They follow Ryo's finger down to the ground and then they flick right back to his phone. He makes a muffled groan at whatever's on the screen, before sitting up and staring at the floor. "What? Where's this feather then?"

It's Sakuya. It shouldn't come as a surprise that he'd be pretending not to see what Ryo is clearly getting worked up about, it's exactly how their friendship works. But Sakuya's not smiling like he does on camera and he's clearly a little annoyed at losing his game. He raises his eyebrows at Ryo.

"Not funny," he says, slumping back down again. His phone goes right back into his hands and he taps until the screen is clearly all he's concentrating on.

Ryo's hand hovers in the air uselessly. "It's not a joke," he says. He leans over; if Sakuya can't see the feather on the floor, he'll surely see it when Ryo is holding it only a few inches from his face, "I'm not-"

He picks it up and his voice dies out.

The feather is real and steady between his fingers, and bright yellow. There's just long enough for the quiet part of his mind to embrace the physical touch, the fact that he'd actually been able to pick it up - even though he hadn't actually realised that was something he'd been worried about.

Then he cannot breathe.

His voice does not die out. A better description is to say that it is drowned out.

There's a single moment where his mouth is flooded with the taste of pennies. Sharp and metallic and overwhelming. It's warm. Despite the absurdity of it, the fact that it's so impossible has him frowning for a second.

He doesn't remember biting his lip. There's no pain, like he's caught his tongue between his teeth. Yet his mouth tastes like blood despite that.

And then it doesn't just taste like blood. It goes from warm to hot in less than a second, enough time for him to reach up and touch his chin with the hand not holding the feather, but not long enough for him to have a single coherent realisation otherwise.

His fingers come away wet. He pulls them from his chin and sees the blood against his fingertips - shiny and fresh and the taste of copper still coating his teeth - and he thinks that's odd right before he starts choking.

There is blood in his mouth. He doesn't know where it's coming from, but there's a single second between the taste and the realisation, and then the fact that it's filling his throat and he can't breathe.

Ryo coughs. He can feel it wet and warm against his chin, surely dripping down onto their floor. He tries to cough it out of his mouth because the panic sets in and he tries to inhale on instinct, but all that happens is a weak gurgle. Anything that had dripped out is being replaced as soon as he can spit it between his lips.

He can't breathe.

There's blood and he's choking on it, and his vision goes white with panic and confusion. Sakuya is right there and he's still playing on his phone. Why won't he look? Surely he can hear Ryo choking. The pathetic sounds of trying to breathe around liquid aren't quiet - but maybe it's like drowning.

Ryo thinks that can be silent. It's his head below the waves, except he's on his hands and knees on the floor of their room and he's choking on blood that won't stop coming.

It's in his nose. It's sharp and painful and he thinks his eyes might be streaming, because his face is warm and damp. And Sakuya is only two metres away, he doesn't even have headphones on - and oh god, Ryo is choking right in front of him and Sakuya hasn't even noticed.

Look up, look up, look up, Ryo prays. He thinks he's going light headed. The metallic taste is getting stronger and his ears are buzzing. There's something numb and cold at the ends of his fingertips and it's spreading up. He's still gripping onto the feather but his hands are freezing and his entire body is shuddering with effort.

To-

To-

"Saku-"

Sakuya looks up. "What?"

Help me, Ryo wants to say. I can't breathe. I think I'm going to drown in blood here on our bedroom floor, and I don't think there's anything I can do to stop it.

He doesn't say any of that. Instead, he opens his mouth and sees that Sakuya is looking at him with an expression of mild concern, but nothing like the horror that he'd expected to see on his face. That he's not screaming or scrambling to his feet to get help, to try and Ryo to stop bleeding out in front him. He's looking on like nothing is wrong.

And in that moment, Ryo realises that the blood is gone.

The puddle on the floor has disappeared. It had pooled around his knees in something cooling and congealing against the ground, but now he looks down and his skin is clean. His face is warm but not damp and there's nothing from his lips. His mouth tastes distantly like something fuzzy, but it's distinctly empty and the taste of blood is gone.

His breathing isn't even shaky.

There is no feather in his hand, either.

"Are you okay?" Sakuya says, "Did you fall out of bed?"'

Ryo just stares. He presses his hands to his face and inspects them when they come back clean, and then does it again. He gets to wobbling feet and stumbles over to their mirror, but there's nothing staining his face. His teeth are white and his tongue is pink when he opens his mouth.

It's impossible.

But what's more impossible: that the blood which had endlessly filled his mouth had disappeared into thin air without so much as a stain being left behind - or that there had never been any blood in the first place?

He can still feel the panic making the very edges of his vision blur into the focus of adrenaline. It had been real, he'd felt it - apart from the fact that it... couldn't have been real. It couldn't have happened without Sakuya noticing, and then vanishing as soon as it had tried to drown him.

Sakuya's game must still be running, but he's abandoned it to watch Ryo.

"I-" Ryo says, and part of his brain is still running a million miles an hour. He wants to throw up, he thinks. Even though the blood is gone, the memory hasn't disappeared, and if he thinks about it he can still taste it. He thinks he should tell Sakuya. But there's no way that Sakuya would believe him without calling him crazy, and so-

"I'm fine," Ryo lies. He sits down before his legs give out on him again. He looks pale in the mirror, like the blood in his mouth actually had been drained from his body. He doesn't look fine and he doesn't feel fine, but he's not sure what the truth is. "I... stood up too fast. It rushed to my head."

Very slowly, Sakuya nods. He barely buys that excuse, let alone the reality of what Ryo had- what Ryo had imagined.

Ryo nods as well, like that's going to make it any more real. He waits until Sakuya starts his game again, and then he gets up and walks very slowly to the bathroom. He locks the door behind him. He looks in the mirror and looks at his teeth and his throat and his tongue and the pale skin of his chin, and his open empty mouth.

His hands grip the sink. They're still pale and cold, and by not even the taste of pennies has disappeared.

He looks at himself, and sees absolutely nothing wrong.

Something is very, very wrong.

Chapter Text

The thing is, up until it had affected dance practice, Ryo had been completely fine to keep it to himself.

Nightmares weren't exactly unusual, considering how messed up their sleep schedules could become. They weren't usually repeats of the same dream over and over, but Ryo had found a couple of similar cases online, so it also wasn't completely impossible either. He could deal with some of the exhaustion by taking shorter and more frequent naps.

If he kept seeing things... that wasn't ideal. He'd lain in bed for hours after choking on blood that didn't even exist outside of his mind. It wasn't even the nightmares that had kept him awake - instead, every time he closed his eyes he'd felt like he was drowning all over again.

Tilting his head back onto the pillow felt like the blood was pooling in his throat. He could remember the fight to breathe all too vividly. His fingers and toes still felt cold, no matter how deep he tried to bury them under the covers.

But the issue in the practice room had been different. It had made him actively worse at dancing, and his performance in their reel had been affected by that.

That's what he tells himself as he steels himself up by the kitchen. Sakuya has gone out for a walk or something - Ryo hadn't listened that hard, only enough to confirm that he'd be out of the dorms and not coming back for a while.

He doesn't still think of drowning. The panic and fear that he'd choke to death in front of his best friend, whilst no one noticed or paid enough attention to save him. The way he hadn't even thought twice about the blood at the time - because other than the taste, he was too lightheaded from a lack of oxygen to concentrate on anything other than trying to breathe.

It makes his stomach twist thinking about it now. Like he needs to duck to the bathroom to rinse his mouth again, with the taste of blood still coating his teeth.

He doesn't think of it. It isn't the reason he's been driven to seek out Sion.

If Sion has noticed him hovering outside the door, he doesn't mention it when Ryo finally gathers the courage and steps inside. It's odd to face the leader of their group with this much anxiety heady in his chest. For all Sion teases them, he's still dependable and easy to come to. Ryo hasn't thought twice about sharing his worries before.

This is different. He doesn't need to pretend that it isn't. This is... seeing things. Tasting things. Drowning in something that- that might not have been real. This isn't just worries about a new comeback or whether he would fumble his words in a speech. This is the kind of issue that means something important. 

Sion is sitting in a chair. Ryo had been expecting to see him watching something - his phone propped up in front of him and reflecting bright coloured lights back onto his skin. Instead, he looks up when Ryo enters, and doesn't say anything until they're sitting opposite each other.

It's too bright in the kitchen. It feels oddly formal staring at each other like this. There's a distance between them created by the table, and Sion's calm stare against Ryo's fidgeting.

"Hyung," Ryo says, "I need to tell you something."

Sion's eyes widen slightly, concern beading at the edges. He's frowning and his back goes straighter than it had been before. He's on edge waiting for Ryo to tell him whatever it is. No good conversation has ever started with I need to tell you something. 

 "I've been struggling to sleep lately," Ryo admits. It's harder to say than he'd thought, even though he'd practiced lines long before this. "I don't know if you've noticed. That's why I've been taking so many naps, on your shoulders and the other hyungs' too."

Sion nods. "I've noticed," he says. It's odd to see him this serious. He usually lightens the mood even when they're stressed and fighting, and to see him completely flat-expression is almost uncanny valley. "Ryo, we've noticed you've been struggling lately."

"You have?" He's hit with a mixture of shame and odd relief.

"Of course we have. You've my dongsaeng; I'd be a bad hyung if I hadn't noticed anything was wrong. You look tired and we're just coming out of comeback season. If anything, you should be sleeping more," Sion hesitates, "You should be sleeping more anyway. Are the nightmares keeping you awake? Is that why you're napping instead?"

The odd relief is sickening and it takes Ryo a moment to swallow around it. Of course Sion had noticed. The others as well - of course he hadn't played it off in the practice room as well as he'd thought. Maybe Daeyoung had reported their odd meeting in the bathroom. Maybe - and this one is tinged with hope - Sakuya had noticed Ryo choking on their bedroom floor after all. 

Sion seems to take his silence as hesitation. "I want to help," he says, and his eyes are dark and sincere when he looks at Ryo. His skin is washed out by the odd lighting, but his eyes are the same as always, and so that's what Ryo looks like.

"The nightmares keep me awake," Ryo says. He swallows. There's no going back now. Once he starts, the weight will pour from his shoulders like sand from bags. A sandstorm that he won't be able to stop, relief in the way that his shaking heart and terrified mind won't be a secret any more. 

Sion will be able to help. Sion always does. 

"That night in the kitchen," he says, and the flood begins, "When I said I saw a bird. I didn't just see one out of the corner of my eye and mistake it. There was a dead bird there for me. And when I tried to point it out to you, it disappeared."

To his credit, Sion's expression fights to reduce his reaction to a single twitch. 

"That's what I've been dreaming about. The bird - except it's me and I'm falling, and I wake up just before I hit the ground."

"So..." Sion says slowly, "Nightmares about a bird. And you saw the bird outside the dorm as well, but it... disappeared when I came to look at you."

"Yes," Ryo says, desperate with relief that Sion appears to be following. "But hyung, it's not just the nightmares. When we were filming in the practice room, every time I looked at the mirror my reflection was slightly delayed. And then later that day-"

His voice catches in his throat. He can taste metal in his mouth. At just the thought of the blood his head starts getting light again, his heart beating so hard he swears he can feel his ribs creaking with the force. But he has to say it. He doesn't have a choice, he hasn't gotten this far to back out. Sion is listening.

"I was in the bedroom with Sakuya. I thought I saw a feather on the floor but Sakuya couldn't see anything. So I went to pick it up and show him, but the moment I touched it my mouth filled with blood and I couldn't breathe. I- I was choking, I was drowning even though it was impossible. And Sakuya didn't notice a thing even though I couldn't breathe and I couldn't ask for help. I thought I was going to die. Then  it just... disappeared like the bird, and it was like it had never been there."

Sion looks at him. "You thought you were choking?"

That's not right. Ryo shakes his head frantically, but he can already tell something in the conversation has shifted. Sion is looking with concern - not about what Ryo is telling him, but for Ryo himself. He doesn't believe him, Ryo realises with a sickening surety. 

"I was choking," Ryo says. "You have to believe me, hyung. I couldn't breathe, that's not something I could just imagine!"

But Sion's expression doesn't change. "I do believe you," he says slowly, "I believe you. Well, I believe that you thought you were choking. Ryo, it's impossible for your mouth to have filled with blood that then disappeared without leaving a trace. Where did it come from? How didn't it stain the ground? How come Sakuya didn't notice a thing?"

It's like he's holding long pointed sticks, slowly sliding them into the gaps between Ryo's ribs. They puncture his lungs as they travel to pierce his heart, letting him exhale with a panicked no, no no - but inevitable. 

He can't answer a single one of those questions. He's not sure whether he has been seeing things. Whether it has all come from his mind or whether there's something else - but what else could there possibly be causing this? 

"I swear it was real," Ryo says, and he realises he's begging. There's desperation lining every word. He needs Sion to believe him, he needs to not be alone facing this any longer. He doesn't want to wake up drowning. He doesn't want to see a flash of yellow and have to cling to life.

He's scared. He's more than scared, he's terrified. His skin must be blotchy with colour because his hands are shaking and he thinks he's moments away from crying. "You have to believe me. I wouldn't just- imagine that I couldn't breathe. Hyung, you don't believe me-"

"I believe you," Sion tells him. "I'll always believe you. I just think... maybe this is something to take to the company. I think a psychiatrist would be able to help you more than I can. I don't know what I can do to help."

Ryo sits back. The desperation seeps from his body like it knows the fight is up before Ryo's mind catches on. "I'm not crazy." He doesn't want to face the looks of someone else, tell them again about the blood and the mirrors and the bird. He'd trusted Sion. That Sion wouldn't tell anyone else or look at him like he was insane or not believe him. Sion was supposed to be safe.

"Ryo," Sion says, and Ryo's head is spinning so badly that his voice sounds distorted in his ears. "We've all noticed you're struggling. None of us want you to be hurting like this. I want to help, I promise I do, but there's nothing I can do. Talking to a professional might-"

He trails off. 

"We didn't judge Riku for needing to take a break," Sion says, and Ryo's stomach drops. It doesn't matter that Sion doesn't continue. He doesn't need to conclude the sentence for it to sting, and for the sting of letting that hurt him burn even deeper. 

"I don't want to be a problem for you," Ryo admits. 

"You're not," Sion promises, but it sounds empty. He's right, Ryo thinks hollowly. There's nothing he can do. He's tried to help, and if Ryo won't listen to the advice he's been given, then nothing has changed at all. "Just... try to get some more sleep. They're just nightmares. If nothing else... maybe once you're not exhausted, you'll be able to think more clearly."

"They're just nightmares," Ryo repeats. His voice sounds weak. 

Sion says nothing to reply. Their conversation is over.

----

If he hadn't made up his decision already, the night after he talks to Sion would have made it up for him.

It doesn't matter that he's already booked a session with the SM psychiatrist the next morning - his mind doesn't seem to have gotten the message. He'd... part of him had stupidly hoped that once it had been booked, some of the stress would have left. He would have closed his eyes and gone to sleep like normal, and slept for twelve hours straight, and then been able to cancel and put it all behind him.

 That doesn't happen.

His heart still feels twisted and the sound of Sakuya breathing on the other side of the room barely drowns out the thunder of blood in his head. He's not sure when he eventually does get too tired, but he doesn't realise he's fallen asleep until he's falling again.

He's falling, and he's falling, and he's inches from the ground when he jerks awake with a heart beating so fast he thinks he might throw up.

His eyes are still half-closed. It's odd - maybe something has changed after all, as he's still so tired. The adrenaline that usually stops him from closing his eyes again is pointedly absent, even though his heart is still working overtime. 

The room is dark. There are shadows that block out the corners and the edges of the ceiling. The piles of their belongings look like shaped figures to his half-asleep mind. It's cold enough to make him shiver. The air is thick, almost, in the best way he can describe it. There's something syrupy and heavy slowing everything down, like a thin layer of a woollen blanket over his ears. His head is stuffy. 

There's-

Beneath it all. There's a noise like scraping nails against wood. It's so distinct that it could be nothing else, the grating sound that makes his blood run cold and every hair on his body stand on edge. 

There's-

It's just a sound. There are no feathers, though in the darkness he's not sure that he'd be able to pick out the yellow, or whether it would have been stained black like the shadows. He tries to turn his neck but his body is fixed into place. It's so heavy that moving even an inch is impossible. The stabbing terror that floods him isn't even enough to twitch a finger. 

There's-

Scraping nails. There's something clawing at the door. It wants to get in. 

Ryo stares. He cannot blink, because then he loses his eyeline with the door. He cannot hear Sakuya breathing. The thing at the door that is trying to get in is too loud. It echoes like an empty hall. It makes his teeth stand on edge.

It wants to get in. This is something he knows instinctively. This is prey-instinct, something small under the eye of a creature much larger and more powerful, and dangerous.

He doesn't know what happens if the door opens. If it breaks through or slips beneath the crack. He only knows that he is terrified and that he cannot let it happen. That something very bad will happen if he lets it in.

It is not kind, the thing at the door. It wants him. 

---

He must have fallen asleep at some point, even if he does not remember it. Sakuya shakes him awake. His hands feel like claws in the blur between sleep and waking up, and Ryo jerks away thinking for a moment that it's over. 

It's just Sakuya. He's already moving away in the time it takes Ryo to get his breathing under control again. 

His skin is still covered in goosebumps. 

There's a chance this is the longest he's slept since he first saw the bird, but he cannot stop thinking about the scratching sound and he doesn't think he can cancel his appointment, as much as he wants to. There's a decent chance he'll lose his confidence the moment he stops concentrating on his determination. Even if it isn't for a few hours yet, he pulls himself out of bed and gets dressed.

Riku is standing in the hallway when Ryo finally emerges to head to the bathroom. He gives Ryo a smile as he trudges past, and just an inch of the kindness makes Ryo pause. He wants it so bad. Sion couldn't make it better, but Riku smiles and Ryo thinks it might be enough.

"Sion's in the bathroom," Riku says before Ryo can open his mouth. "You might want to give it a few minutes."

Sure enough, he can hear the shower. Water against the tiles and the hum of the hot water pipes in the walls. 

"You were with him?"

Riku pauses. It's not that he's shy. Or that his relationship with Sion has ever been something they've hidden from the other members. In an idol group, things like that would inevitably come out anyway - they live practically on top of each other and in full-view of the cameras the other half of the time - but Wish has always been straightforward discussing those matters.

Still. Ryo may be eighteen now, but he thinks Riku sometimes sees him like a kid anyway. He's not asking questions about what they'd gotten up to in Sion's room, because he'd rather not know, thank you very much. He just... it's a third person that might have heard something. Sakuya and Sion have proven they hadn't noticed a single incident, but maybe Riku is different. 

"I just wanted to ask if you heard something."

Riku's face goes pink. "Ah- Ryo, I-"

"Not like that! I mean-" he hesitates. Sion and Riku are close. Close enough that what one of them knows, there's a good chance the other knows as well. It's a good way of sharing the burden of leadership, and they all trust Riku enough that even the heavier topics are safe in his hands. "I thought I heard something at the door. I was half-asleep, but it sounded like it was scratching, trying to get in."

He turns, as if to emphasise his point. They both look towards the closed door to the bedroom. The white paint is completely unmarred except for the small dent where Sakuya had slid across the hall a few months ago. There are no scratches. Ryo... isn't even surprised. There's a sick wave of acceptance that washes over him instead.

It hadn't been real. Just like the bird and the blood must have been in his head, because there's no other alternative that makes sense, the thing outside his door must have just been his imagination. It couldn't hurt him.

(That hadn't stopped him from drowning)

"Trying to get in?" Riku's eyes widen. "Like... a sasaeng? Have you reported this, Ryo? We should check over everything and call the managers, just in case."

Ryo shakes his head. "I don't think it was human," he admits. "It was a nightmare. There's nothing on the door. It's just like the nightmares. That's why I'm finally going to get that psychiatric appointment; it's booked for this morning.

Riku's expression folds. It doesn't crumple, he's too composed for that, but his dark eyes seem to get darker and there's earnest empathy written across his features. Maybe he's thinking about his own hiatus. Even though the circumstances are different, or Riku just cares enough that he tries to pull Ryo close to him anyway.

"Ryo-chan," he says, and they've been speaking in Japanese this whole time, but this time it feels different. Ryo doesn't wish he were home. He's happy here - he loves the stage and the fans and the way the world feels when he performs. But Riku sounds like home anyway, and it makes something wash over him, like he wants to sink his face into the crook of Riku's neck like a child. 

"Are you sure about this?" Riku says, when they eventually pull apart. "There's lots that you can try to help with nightmares. Have you been having problems sleeping too? You do look tired, now I'm looking at you."

"I've tried everything already," Ryo says. There's a finality when he speaks that he didn't expect, but it's true. He's out of options. This is the only thing left to try. "It's not just nightmares. I've been seeing... things when I'm awake as well. I just want it to stop."

In the bathroom, the water shuts off. Sion will come out soon and Ryo will head inside, and their conversation will be over.

Still, Riku's hands linger on Ryo's shoulders for a few moments too long. He stares into his eyes and he's frowning, looking Ryo's expression up and down before crumpling. It's easy to talk to Riku. 

He wants to hear Riku laugh. Like he's laughing everything Ryo has told him off, and with that the world will be okay again - and the nightmares will stop and Ryo won't still think of drowning, or that awful all-encompassing terror. But Riku doesn't laugh. He's serious because he knows how much this means to Ryo, and he's not sure whether the sincerity is making it better or worse.

"You can always come to me," Riku says. "I wish you'd told me earlier. I don't like the thought of you having to do all this by yourself. We're a team. You shouldn't feel scared to come to us for things like this. We could have worked something out."

"We have worked something out," Ryo says. It sounds a little robotic. "I'm sure the psychiatrist will do some tests and give me a remedy that'll sort it all out. Or something like that. It'll be fine."

The words taste like ash on his tongue. It's better than blood, so when Sion does open the bathroom door, Ryo slips in behind him silently, and ignores Riku staring sadly at his back.

Chapter Text

The visit to the psychiatrist feels like plastic.

The walls are white. The floor squeaks beneath his shoes. The chair he's sat down on is coated with something waxy and clear, and digging his fingernails into the material doesn't leave so much as a single blemish. The back is hard and leaning against it is uncomfortable, so he sits with a straight back.

He's sure they say stuff about patient privacy. There'd been a bunch of papers he'd had to sign back when he'd first been officially selected for debut, and he's sure that some of them were related to situations such as this exact moment. He doesn't think he read them in that much detail back then. He can't remember what they said now, either way.

Whatever they say about patient privacy, everything he says here is going to be shared with anyone the company deems 'needs to know'. They'll be discussing his mental health and his access to fan messaging apps, whether he'll be able to attend performances and fansigns. If this is having an effect on the other members. Just how bad, exactly, it is.

It's pretty bad. 

He tells the psychiatrist what he's been seeing, and it all gets written down into a plastic-covered notebook that he can't read. His face remains steady - not a single flinch even when Ryo describes the blood or the thing outside the door. When Ryo visibly starts to shiver, because just the thought of the scratching last night is enough to fill him with an implacable terror all over again, he notes down something else.

His eyes remain judging. The air around the two of them crinkles like plastic. They've put a clear bag around the room and slowly the oxygen is being pulled away, except it's only Ryo who seems to have noticed that it's getting hard to breathe. 

"Have you told the nightmares to just... go away?"

It's the first suggestion the psychiatrist has made that isn't just asking how much water he drinks and how much social media he's consuming before bed. 

Ryo looks up at him. "No," he says, and it sounds dry despite not meaning to. He'd thought his chest might feel a little looser after telling a professional everything, but instead he just feels as wound-up with tension as ever. He doesn't have a good feeling about this. The session isn't over, and yet he's lost hope.

The psychiatrist writes something else down. "You should try that," he says, pausing to push his glasses up with a single finger. 

"Do you think it'll make it stop?" 

The psychiatrist stares at him. His gaze is cold and sweeping, and Ryo almost flinches back from it. "You understand the position you're putting the company in. You haven't reported any issues with stress and anxiety before this, and now you're coming with symptoms such as this? In the future, please fill in your forms accurately, Mr. Hirose, so we can deal with these issues before they start... causing problems."

His words are scathing. Ryo feels something shameful inside of him, even though they aren't even true. He hadn't been feeling stressed or anxious before any of this started. He hadn't lied on any forms he'd submitted.

He doesn't reply. This is the second time the psychiatrist has chided him with words to that effect. He'd tried to argue the first time but the man had just written down, and Ryo had been too scared of being labelled difficult - or even worse, erratic - to try again.

"I'm sure this will all clear up within a few days of cleansing and keeping healthy. Try not to consume so many horror movies, perhaps. And- stay aware that visits here are kept on record. We'd - ah- encourage you to get better."

They'd be forced to take further steps if he keeps coming with the same problem, Ryo knows he means. He doesn't want them to take further steps as much as the company doesn't. The company likely wants to cover their own backs and prevent any diagnosis that could cause 'issues' in the future from being made. Ryo just knows that no matter what the further steps are, they won't be good.

He doesn't watch horror films. He keeps healthy. He isn't anxious or stressed - or at least, he hadn't been before all this started. 

"I'm getting you a week off from activities," the psychiatrist says. It's funny - how it sounds like he doesn't believe him, or that he thinks this is some sort of game. Something he's pulled upon himself from too many late nights. And yet he's being placed on a week-long hiatus anyway, because the company - no matter what the psychiatrist might say - cannot afford for him to get worse. 

Not when it comes to... seeing things.

"And a prescription of sleeping pills, with tonics for stress," the psychiatrist says. He signs off a piece of paper, handing it to a woman who Ryo hadn't even noticed entering the room. The plastic book gets closed and the plastic chairs squeak as they both get to their feet.

His prescription is ready by the time he's at the door. It's all internally processed, of course. In a plastic bag is a white cardboard box filled with sleeping pills, the label printed on the outside in both Korean and Japanese. There are a few glass bottles next to it, and they clink together as he bows a respectful goodbye. 

His chest is still just as tight as before. 

----

The rest of the day passes, and Ryo makes sure to take the tonics as prescribed. They make his mouth screw up with their bitter flavour, but he swallows them down anyway. Whatever stress or anxiety or hormonal imbalance is causing him to have these nightmares and hallucinations, the tonics can only make them better.

At this point, he's close to willing to try anything. They're not real and they can't really hurt him - and if the visit to the psychiatrist had seemed more like the company were trying to cover their backs than anything else, then at least he's had that reinforced.

So he takes the tonics.

When it gets to evening and the exhaustion gets to him, he takes out his new pack of sleeping pills. He reads the instructions carefully and takes the prescribed dose. 

"Do you want me to leave?" Sakuya asks. He's sitting on his bed as Ryo climbs into his own. It's much earlier than either of them would normally go to sleep, but Ryo is tired and he has been for weeks at this point. He's only half-expecting the pills to work. And if they do, he wants to spend as long as possible asleep and nightmare free to try and catch up with his sleep debt.

"Nah it's fine," Ryo says. He makes a cooing noise and Sakuya wrinkles his nose. Ryo shifts back until he's on top of his sheets with his head on the pillow. His body is feeling heavy already, but that's more the fact he's lying down after not being able to sleep properly for weeks. Once his eyes start closing, he'll get under the covers properly.

"I can turn the lights off," Sakuya offers.

"Just like you turn the air conditioning off?"

Sakuya snorts and that's the end to their conversation. Ryo stares up at the ceiling. He's not sure where his thoughts go, but he isn't tired enough that he doesn't notice-

When he stops being able to move properly. His body had been heavy before, but this is like his limbs are made from lead. The ceiling seems like it's double the height of usual. He watches the patterns of paint-streaks and tries to make sense of their shapes. The light gets lower as the evening stretches later, and that's when he notices it. 

There is something dark on the ceiling.

He's too tired to sit up properly, so instead he stares up and wonders what it is. It's not the whole ceiling. Just the angle where the wall hits it. It's dark like someone has highlighted the joint between them - like the shadows have suddenly become stronger but only in one place.

As he watches, the darkness stretches. In front of his eyes, he watches as it takes shape to long drips down the sides of the wall. He knows the colour before it even gets close enough for him to see. He knows what the smell will be before it hits him, but he has to lie perfectly still for agonising minutes anyway, until the dripping finally gets close enough.

It's blood. The walls are bleeding. 

Ryo wants to get up. He wants to pull away, but the sleeping pill is starting to take effect and his body feels heavier than ever. Something in the back of his mind is syrupy from the drugs, or maybe he's finally coming to terms with the fact that he isn't surprised by this anymore.

Scared, yes. But there's not the shock or the bite of this can't be real, what am I seeing. It's a sick acceptance instead. Somehow that's worse.

The drops of blood keep moving. They're thin and stringy, not larger than the width of his finger, but they keep coming. The liquid gathers in the crook of the ceiling and lets the drips travel without pausing, a constant stream. They connect to each other like the lines of a spiderweb, gaining momentum and soon disappearing to where he can no longer see. 

He's always been told he has a T personality. Thinking instead of feeling, always the one to jump to the logical conclusion or skip right around the intricacies that might have come with looking at the feelings first.

He's never considered that the nightmares could be something other than - when he'd realised they weren't real, at least - hallucinations. Nightmares conjured up from his mind. Nothing that he'd be able to touch if he reached out (don't think of the blood coating his teeth and filling his lungs), and nothing that actually existed. 

Except - this feels real. He reaches out and presses his palm to the wall and the rivulets of blood pool onto his skin. Dripping down his fingers and welling up in between them, before the amount slowly becomes so much and it starts to drip down the back of his hand as well.

The wall is cold but the blood is warm.

It's too real to be something inside his head, but Sakuya can't see it. It's warm and it's wet and it fills his nose with the sharp smell of metal. It stains his white sheets until they're the colour of rust. Ryo tries to pull away but his body feels fixed in position.

This isn't a hallucination. He knows it as deeply as he knows anything else. The pillow beneath his head is real but so is the blood dripping down the walls, and that's something that only happens in horror movies, so-

He's always had a T personality. He's never believed in the paranormal. Not once had that thought crossed his mind, that there could be a third option between not real and real. Something that clearly wasn't real to Sakuya or Sion or Riku or Yushi or Daeyoung, but was real to Ryo.

It's easy to come to terms with, but maybe that's because as soon as it crosses his mind, he knows without question that it must be true. There is no other explanation as to the terror, or the presence of something evil that drips down the walls with the blood. Just out of sight but that doesn't mean it isn't there. 

There's movement on the other side of the room. 

Sakuya is getting up. Ryo can only twist his neck slightly, which means he can barely catch sight of Sakuya stretching as he stands up from the bed. There are bright crimson streaks down his white t-shirt, pooling at the shoulders like he'd been sat against the wall. He wipes his cheek and he leaves something dark and rust-coloured against his pale skin.

He doesn't look at the walls. There is blood on his hand, rapidly-cooling where the shirt sticks to his back, but he can't see a thing. He can't feel a thing. It is only Ryo who can see the gory sight.

And Sakuya is leaving.

"Don't-" Ryo says, because he'd felt scared before but now he's realising that hadn't been true fear. This is true fear. The words don't come out right, swallowed by his body lying flat and the heaviness of his tongue. "Don't leave me-"

The walls are bleeding and Ryo cannot move, and he hadn't realised how terrified to be left alone he'd been until now. There is nothing he can do. Sakuya doesn't even glance at him as he pads to the door. He cannot hear Ryo's voice calling for him to stay. Ryo doesn't even know if he's making a sound, or if that has been stolen from him just like his ability to leave.

"Don't go- Sakuya, don't-"

Sakuya opens the door. He's gone within seconds. The walls are sticky red and the mattress must be impossibly stained by now. It's starting to get wet where Ryo is lying. His palm is still against the wall and the rivulets of blood have not stopped their journey, so they've trickled down his hand to his arm to pool at his collarbone. 

Sakuya is gone. Ryo is all alone. He cannot move and he cannot call for help. He thinks his eyes would be burning if he could cry. He thinks his chest would be moving up and down with the force of his heart against his ribs. He thinks he might scream.

For somebody. Anybody.

Don't leave him alone here. He's scared. He doesn't like this anymore - he never has, but this is so much worse and he doesn't think he can be brave. He just wants it to stop. 

Sakuya has left the door slightly open. Ryo thinks he might throw up if his stomach could twist, because there are no words to describe the pressure that settles over the room. The presence of something cold and dark and evil.

It doesn't need to scratch to get in.

The door is ajar.

It is there. Ryo can see the door push open but he cannot lift his neck. He can see the room darken and he knows there is something there - something coming inside that he cannot see. He'd thought that he'd been scared when he'd heard it clawing to try and come in.

Somehow, the silence is so much worse.

The light above his head flickers. There is something approaching. It is not Sakuya. It is not human.

Ryo's breathing is sharp and frantic. The blood is no longer warm, but cold and congealing in between his skin and in the fabric of his shirt, and below his back and pooling on his chest. It is close. It is almost over. It feels like time should stretch and draw out the terror, but seconds bleed into each other instead. 

"Don't go-" Ryo says, the only shape his mouth can make. He's not sure it's moving at all, but he repeats it in his head like none of this is real, and Sakuya is still standing there. He doesn't want to be alone. He's not ready. He's scared. He-

The light bulb pops.

Chapter Text

The thing is, Yushi has always been perceptive. Just not in the traditional way.

He might not know when the best time to speak is, so he ends up repeating his jokes again and again until someone takes notice. He might not hear what he's being told the first time. He knows he misses a lot in the half-hour before meal times when he's hungry.

But since he was a child, Yushi has always been the first to notice when something isn't exactly... right.

Movement of a curtain out of the corner of his eye. Yushi is the one to wander over and check, only to see that the window is closed and there's no breeze. He's the one to look up and see two circling birds in the sky overhead. When he'd played football, he'd be the only one to realise that one of the balls had rolled further than it had been placed, despite the ground being completely flat.

He's the one that has the childhood ghost stories.

When he was two years old, his parents swear that Yushi held a conversation with someone that didn't exist. They woke up in the middle of the night to find him on the floor, having escaped his crib, scribbling on a piece of paper. When they crouched unseen behind the door, they watched him lift his head and show the paper to thin air. He'd babbled in toddler language to someone that neither of them could see. The room had been cold despite the heater in the corner. 

It's just a story. He was also the type of child to have imaginary friends, although they'd all disappeared by the time he turned four. But unlike the imaginary friends, that odd feeling he'd get never completely went away. 

When the curtain fluttered in still air, something he couldn't explain twisted in his stomach. When the ball rolled back on its own, Yushi could swear it was like the change of pressure in an airplane. He'd only noticed the birds in the sky because something unexplainable told him to look up.

It's always small things. Yushi is more perceptive, which just means he sees what other people might not notice. The occasions have stretched across his entire life, and never usually come to more than a bad feeling.

He can make sure not to stand near that window, to play with that ball specifically, or to stay inside for the rest of the day. 

When Sion mentions that Ryo thought a bird flew into the window, there's no reason to think that this will be any different.

"He genuinely seemed shocked," Sion says as Riku hums his acknowledgment to the story. "I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bird there, and something had picked it up. Or that a piece of trash had gotten caught in the wind. But he seemed to think it was a bird."

"He's also too stubborn to admit that he's wrong," Riku suggests. 

Yushi doesn't say anything.

Nothing about the story is odd. It's a five-second tale to fill time while they wait for their delivery food to arrive. Sion wouldn't mention it with such a blase attitude if he thought it were something serious, and the conversation has already moved onto how much of Sakuya's hair has been getting stuck in the drains. 

But just like the ball and the window and the birds, something changes in the air. 

It's not like something he can actually feel. That's the problem with trying to describe a sensation that the rest of the world doesn't seem to notice - there's no physical change, no shift in emotions that he can describe, or anything he could put his finger on being different.

It's more that something in his brain just clicks. There's a shiver between one moment and the next. One second it's just a story, and the next Yushi thinks with a certainty that isn't his, that there's something off. 

He gets to his feet. Sion and Riku are still talking. Neither of them notice Yushi crossing the room until he's standing by the window. Sion hadn't mentioned which window Ryo had seen the bird by, but Yushi thinks it's this one anyway. He stands there and peers out into the street.

It's cloudy. The air is thick with the familiar heaviness of a city. The small metal grid beneath the window is small and completely clear of - well, anything. There's a tiny patch of rust near the fixtures. There is no bird, but Yushi should have expected that.

He also expected the feeling to go away as soon as he started to investigate it. Pressing his palm to the window leaves a slowly-forming hand print against the glass. Should it be this cold? He's shivering again, like there's a draft coming in.

There is no bird, but there is a bad feeling.

Yushi steps away. He pulls his hand from the glass like he'd noticed nothing, and takes a seat back at the table. 

If he should have noticed at the window, then he should have noticed in the bathroom as well.

He's washing his hands, looking in the mirror up at the bulb hanging from the ceiling. He's pretty sure they've been talking about getting it fixed at some point. It's impressive that nothing's been done about it sooner - it means Yushi can tell Daeyoung hasn't been here recently. He would have noticed and come with a lampshade to fix it on his next day off. 

There is something odd about the bathroom. It's an odd feeling like he usually gets, but more physical than most of what he notices. 

Maybe because there's nothing he can see that's wrong. Instead, the wrong-ness has built up like a buzzing just beyond his vision. He turns his head but it always remains just outside of his line of sight.

"Eh? Yushi?"

Yushi looks up. Ryo is standing at the door, half-asleep and with wide confused eyes. He's looking at Yushi like he's never seen someone wash their hands before. "What are you doing here?"

There's still something buzzing around them. This unsettling feeling of something that Yushi is missing - but he cannot see or hear or touch. Yushi opens his mouth to reply when the pressure suddenly gets stronger. There's still no visible change but the buzzing has intensified in a way he can't explain. 

"Ryo?" Yushi says, his mouth moving before his brain can catch up. 

Ryo is just standing there.

It isn't like he's waiting for an answer. His posture is tense and the buzzing gets louder when Yushi tries to step forwards, so he takes the hint and stays where he is. There's an awful feeling in his chest. Something in his head, something like a survival instinct, tells him to keep washing his hands.

He needs to pretend there is nothing wrong. That's it. If no one else can see the buzzing or has noticed anything else wrong, then Yushi notices nothing as well. Something tells him he does not want to make himself a target.

A target? A target of what?

His fingers are soft by the time the buzzing fades away again. The light in the bathroom flickers. The water in the faucet has long since gone cold, and Yushi has traced every fleck of toothpaste on the mirror with his eyes. Ryo is looking at him again, when he checks the reflection.

So Yushi looks up again. He stops the faucet and shakes his hands once. "Washing my hands."

They head to the kitchen together. Ryo seems normal again, so Yushi lets his guard down and relaxes. He takes a seat and grabs a cookie, nibbling on the very edges as he watches Ryo get swept into a headlock by Sion.

He wants to ignore what had happened in the bathroom, but then it happens again. Ryo starts eating his soup but there's something not quite right. He doesn't speak. He doesn't look up from his bowl. It's nothing obvious - nothing Yushi can look and put a finger on, that he can say this is wrong about. 

It just is. 

There's no buzzing this time, just the sick sensation that he knows something isn't right. Even if he can't place it. The lights in the kitchen look a little fuzzy around the edges, maybe, or the way that Ryo's shadow casts against the table is a little misshapen. 

He eats his soup robotically. It's raining outside and the noise is loud, the sound of droplets against the window blocks everything apart from the quiet conversation. If Ryo's spoon hits the side of the bowl, Yushi can't hear a sound. If there is buzzing, maybe he wouldn't notice. 

Or maybe he would. His head is beginning to hurt. His eyes are straining to look at Ryo, so he can only half-watch. He keeps hoping that the odd sensation will disappear, but the seconds stretch on and on - and even when it does finally leave, there's no relief.

It's like the air being let out of a balloon.  There is not the same noise as being burst, or the same violence. But the sound of deflation is slow and painful all the same, and the balloon ends up flat either way. 

"Huh?" Ryo says. "Did someone eat my soup?"

The thing is, Yushi's not sure what to do. His own food tastes like ash in his mouth. There's a crawling sensation on his skin, and though the buzzing has disappeared, the memory of it lingers. 

But he keeps nibbling the cookie. Something tells him not to get involved, and everything else odd he's witnessed has ended it sorting itself out. Ryo needs to get a good night's sleep and whatever is in their dorm will eventually move on with the changing of the seasons. 

He thinks. 

(He hopes)

---

Ryo has been lying in exactly the same position for ten minutes, and Sakuya is pretty sure he's finally fallen asleep. 

It can't be that comfortable. He's not even lying beneath the covers. He's staring up at the ceiling (or he would be, if his eyes weren't closed) and his neck is propped back on a pillow. 

They've shared a room enough that Sakuya knows Ryo doesn't normally sleep like this. He also doesn't usually take sleeping pills before he goes to bed, though, and it seems like a normal enough response to being put to sleep by drugs. 

They've also shared a room enough that Sakuya is aware that Ryo hasn't been sleeping properly lately. He doesn't move around or create a disturbance during the night, but Sakuya's woken up a few times before to see Ryo sitting up. The recent bags under his eyes said he'd been struggling long before the sleeping pills made an appearance this evening. 

He thinks that Ryo's taken a nap on his shoulder more times these past three weeks than across the entire last three years of knowing each other.

Which is why when Ryo falls asleep and it's still the evening, Sakuya decides to leave him be. He obviously needs the rest. It's a bit awkward when the room belongs to both of them, but Sakuya silently thinks that he'd hate to disturb his friend. He deserves every minute of sleep he can get - and Sakuya would rather not wake him up by accident.

When he notices that Ryo's breathing has evened out and he hasn't moved for a while, he puts his phone back into his pocket. The lights in the room are already low, so he doesn't do anything except get to his feet and head to the door. He leaves it open slightly behind him. That way, if Ryo cries out, it's more likely to be heard.

Sion is sitting in the kitchen when Sakuya enters. He's tapping his fingers lightly against the table and is watching a series of messages appear on his phone, only paying half attention to the rest of the room.

"Ryo's asleep," Sakuya says. 

It's a little validating to see the way that Sion nods tightly. His phone goes newly forgotten as he slumps back into his seat. He's still taking the knowledge of the week-long hiatus and the sleeping pills hard. Such is the role of a leader, Sakuya guesses.

"Good," Sion says eventually. "He looked tired. I hope he gets some rest tonight."

"Sucks that I have to hang out with you instead," Sakuya says to lighten the mood a little. He'd make a big show of flopping down into a chair and looking bored, but the kitchen is still tense and he's worried it would be too loud. 

Sion smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. He glances to the hallway and then sits up properly again. "Let's order in."

"Here? Aren't we trying to be quiet?"

"No, down at the other dorm. We won't wake up Ryo by accident that way, and it feels like it's been a while since we had a proper meal." 

With everyone there is left unsaid. It has been a while - with promotions coming to a close, and considering the fact they'll soon be gearing up for another round of touring. But it won't be everyone there. 

"Can you leave a note?" Sion gets to his feet and picks up his phone again. He types something, presumably sending off a message letting Riku and the others know that they'll be around shortly. Sakuya writes out a short note as he does - he doesn't think Ryo will be waking up (or he hopes he won't, since that's the whole point of the sleeping pills), but he doesn't want him to be alone and drugged if he does. Especially not if he doesn't know where everyone else has gone.

It only takes a minute or so. Sakuya only needs to say where they've gone and what time-ish they're planning to get back. After a moment, he takes a photo and sends it to Ryo's phone. Then he joins Sion by the door and they head to the other dorm.

Daeyoung is waiting for them when they arrive, opening the door before they need to knock. "We've ordered already," he says, "but Yushi's cooking ramen if you're hungry before that."

Sion grins and beelines forward. He's been stepping back from teasing Ryo lately, which means that Sakuya has been getting the brunt of the attention. Apparently with one of his favourite targets out of the picture, Yushi is getting moved into the firing line. 

He can already hear the get off, get off from the kitchen. 

Daeyoung closes the door and Sakuya follows the noise. There's a mismatch of six chairs around the tables in both of their dorms, and Sakuya snags one of the comfier ones here whilst Sion bothers Yushi by the counters. Riku looks up as he enters and shuffles his own chair forward to pout in Sakuya's direction. Sakuya ignores him.

"Ryo's sleeping," he says, in case Sion hadn't told them in his message. 

Immediately, the mood in the room drops. Riku stops making pouty faces and freezes in place, Daeyoung nods solemnly. Even Sion pulls away, finally letting Yushi stir his ramen in peace, joining the rest of them at the table. 

They all know about the week-long hiatus. That had been announced by management as soon as it was approved by the psychiatrist. 

They also all know about the sleeping pills. They're not the type of group to keep things like that from each other. Sakuya had thought that Ryo wouldn't be especially. If it were him... maybe he would have kept his sleeping issues to himself. But for Ryo - he'd been waiting for Ryo to reach out, only for it never to happen.

He doesn't like it. It feels like reaching out, only to realise that his fingers are an inch short away. Taking the stairs down and misjudging where the next step will be - so there's a split second where he's convinced he's falling. 

Sakuya and Ryo are best friends. Sakuya had known Ryo wasn't sleeping, but he'd been so sure that Ryo would have eventually talked to him about it that he hadn't even considered bringing it up first. 

"I saw him in the corridor this morning," Riku says. "He looked like he already had his mind made up. I tried to talk to him, but he didn't really want to speak. Or it seemed like... Did he talk to any of you?"

Sakuya shakes his head. Daeyoung does as well, and Yushi sits in silence. All heads turn to Sion. It's hard enough to understand what might have been going on in Ryo's mind recently - apart from suffering in silence, apparently - but maybe he'd gone to Sion. 

Except Sion shakes his head as well.

"I've been trying to be supportive, but with promotions I'm not even sure I noticed anything was wrong. I could see that he was tired, but I just thought he'd been staying up too late. I didn't think it would be bad enough that he'd consider going to a psychiatrist."

They're all tired around comeback season. They're all used to getting up at stupidly early times in the morning, and then getting back late and unable to sleep from excess caffeine and energy. They sleep between schedules and in the car and whilst they're getting their hair and make-up done.

Except Ryo, apparently. 

That's what's not being spoken aloud here. They've all had sleeping issues before, and the medication isn't even that much of a big deal. There are injuries the fans don't know about and medications they've had to take - all so they can keep performing without letting anything show. 

It's the week-long hiatus that's odd. That's what's leaving a bad taste in Sakuya's mouth. 

It feels like they're trying to draw conclusions without knowing all the information. Sakuya had been waiting for Ryo to come to him about not sleeping - maybe even just to tell him not to use his phone while Ryo was trying to rest. But that's small. If it were something bigger, he would have told him. Right?

He would have told someone. 

"A hiatus is such a big thing to come out of nowhere," Sion says, and suddenly Sakuya thinks he might be wrong. There are five people in this room, and none of them know a thing. He cannot imagine Ryo deciding to go to a psychiatrist for a hiatus without letting one of the members know - he cannot imagine him making that decision alone. 

But... apparently he had. It doesn't make sense and Sakuya wants to say that, but the voice in his head sounds like a petulant child. 

So he sits in silence until their delivery arrives instead.

Chapter Text

It starts like a creeping feeling.

Something has been wrong for a while, Sakuya thinks, and he just hasn't noticed. It's like that story of a frog in boiling water - the temperature has been getting warmer and warmer without him paying attention to the bubbles beneath the surface. Only for him to wake up and realise he's slowly being cooked alive.

Sakuya wakes up and it feels like someone has been watching him. He takes a shower and there's a second where the bulb in the bathroom pops, leaving him in darkness. He orders bread to be delivered to the dorm, only to find spots of mould like sick patches of colour across the bottom. 

He would say that there's only been one good thing: Ryo finally seems to be sleeping better.

The dark circles beneath his eyes are starting to fade, at least. Sakuya doesn't turn over in the middle of the night and see Ryo slumped against his pillows - clearly awake - anymore. He'd been complaining about odd things for the past couple of weeks, and Sakuya relaxes when he stops. Whatever had been bothering him has clearly stopped, and he's acting normally again.

He only even needed to take sleeping pills for one night, and it seems to have fixed everything. He still has the full week of the hiatus to recover. Sakuya can't blame him for using that time to recover properly, though. He's been finding it a little hard to sleep himself, lately, and he keeps having odd dreams that he can't remember when he wakes up.

So there's that - the fact that there's nothing wrong.

Nothing that Sakuya can put his finger on, at least.

He would say that Ryo sleeping well is a good thing. It feels selfish and cruel to say otherwise. But since Ryo started sleeping better, Sakuya has felt like someone has been watching him. Even if Ryo's eyes are closed and his breathing is even, Sakuya wakes up feeling like there's someone staring at him.

Every time he thinks it's Ryo. His hair stands on edge from that direction, and every time he sits up, battling through sleep until he's ready to speak coherently and tell Ryo to knock it off. 

But Ryo is never awake.

It's the strangest feeling. It feels like he's being watched right until he actually looks, or just becomes aware enough of the situation to realise there's no one there. It's like feeling eyes staring at him, only to turn and catch the moment that they look away, with no other proof that it had ever happened. 

It makes Sakuya's skin crawl.

Then, when he shows Ryo the moulding bread, Ryo barely reacts. Someone else might not notice a change, but to Sakuya he seems muted. He stares at it when Sakuya holds it out. But he doesn't look like he sees it - at least, not in the same way that Sakuya does. Like he wouldn't have noticed without it being pointed out. 

He says that to Yushi, when they head to the company to record some lines for - some promotional material or something, even Sakuya isn't sure at this point. Daeyoung had gone earlier in the morning and Sion and Riku after them, leaving Yushi and Sakuya in the last shift.

It looks like something else is on Yushi's mind. 

"There's something wrong," Sakuya says, waving his hands in front of Yushi's eyes when he doesn't immediately respond. Yushi just bats it away, so Sakuya moves up another level. He puts his arm around Yushi's shoulder and leans his weight onto him.

It works. Yushi flinches away, tugging out of Sakuya's grip - but his eyes are finally on him by the time Sakuya's arm is back by his side. "What?"

"There's something wrong," Sakuya repeats. "You weren't listening. I'm saying that Ryo is still acting weird. I keep thinking that he's watching me."

It feels odd to put it into words. Before, he could have swept it away as his mind simply playing tricks on him. But as soon as he says it, a shiver runs down his spine. It feels like he's spoken it into reality.

"Isn't Ryo always bothering you?" Yushi sniffs.

"Not like this. He doesn't... This is going to sound crazy, but I keep getting the feeling that something is wrong."

Yushi stops walking. Sakuya thinks he's going to bat it off again. It's always very hard to tell what Yushi's going to do; it's dependent on his mood and the time and a hundred other factors like the position of the stars in the sky. It would be in character for Yushi to completely change the subject. 

He doesn't. He stares at Sakuya, and there's something strange in his expression. It's unlike anything Sakuya has ever seen before. 

Sakuya takes a step back. He almost makes a comment on it - like woah, freaky - but there's no one else around and it would feel performative. And... Yushi looks serious.

"You think things have been weird?" Yushi asks.

Slowly, Sakuya nods. "Mm."

Yushi keeps staring. Woah, freaky, Sakuya thinks again, but his lips stay closed. The company hallway suddenly feels a lot colder. Yushi's eyes seem to bore into something Sakuya hadn't realised was on display - looking behind his skull and into something invisible. 

"Have you seen anything?" Yushi says eventually. He's frowning slightly. There are a hundred calculations going on behind his eyes, and it's Yushi, so Sakuya's not sure he'd understand a single one of them. 

Has he seen anything? Other than the weird sensation of being watched, nothing has been out of the ordinary. His shoulders are heavy with the knowledge that there's something wrong - but that's just that: a feeling. Nothing that can be proved. A streak of bad luck and the mounting exhaustion that comes with the end of promotions. 

Speaking it out loud earlier had made it seem real. But now, when he reaches inside his mind and tries to grasp for something solid, his hands come back empty.

He tells Yushi that. Yushi doesn't react, and somehow that seems even less reassuring than a proper response. 

"If you see something," he says, after they've started walking again. "Tell me."

"Like what?"

Yushi glances at him. He's still frowning, and Sakuya thinks that he's still thinking about whatever it is he'd been trying to work out. "You'll know," is the only answer he's given.

This time, Sakuya does speak out loud. Under his breath he says, "Woah, freaky." Then he shudders, makes a resolution to put all this behind him, and starts to pick up the speed.

----

That night, Sakuya wakes up to the feeling of being watched.

Again, it's creeping. He wakes up blurry-eyed and dry-throated. The room is almost completely pitch black, and the small strip of light spilling from the corridor underneath the door does nothing to illuminate the darkest corners. 

Sakuya knows he has a water bottle on the floor by his bed, but his eyelids seem almost glued together. He has to wave his hand around blindly for a few seconds until he finds it, and the stumbling of his fingers against the plastic seems clumsy despite its concealment.

It's worth it. The water is cool when it hits his throat. It tastes slightly sweet - like all water in the early hours of the morning - and he drains almost the entire thing before closing the lid and setting it back down. 

It's all he'd woken up for. His head is thick and his brain slow from being awoken. His limbs are warm beneath the covers of his bed, and the air where his shoulder is exposed shivers against the outside air. It's instinct to slump back down against his pillow. He's still tired enough to fall asleep within moments.

But the time it had taken to drink the water had brought just enough clarity for-

He feels like he's being watched. Sakuya isn't sure whether it had been like that since the moment he'd opened his eyes, or whether it had taken a while for his mind to kick into awareness. The feeling of being stared at prickles his neck, but it's such a slow realisation that he's not sure when it would have started.

Some of the tiredness disappears the moment he notices it. It's suddenly very easy to open his eyes, with the world coming back into focus as the adrenaline sets in. He expects to look across the room and catch Ryo just looking away - as seems to be their routine every time, these past two days - only for Ryo's bed to be empty.

The covers are strewn. Half of them are caught between the mattress and the floor, just grazing the ground. His pillow has been pushed back. Sakuya looks closer, and he can even see Tonton caught between in the space next to the wall - such an odd contrast to the normal careful position of the stuffed dog that Sakuya doesn't recognise it for a second.

He'd thought Ryo was sleeping better. 

It's only been a few days, but Sakuya had thought he'd been sleeping better. He'd looked less tired. He'd been less jumpy and he'd been acting more like normal - and it's true that Sakuya had been looking for excuses to feel a little less guilty, but everyone else had seen it too. 

If Ryo's up and wandering around, unable to sleep again, it's the least Sakuya can do to make sure that he's okay.

He's up on his feet before the reasoning really has a chance to set in. Something about the darkness of the room is... he doesn't want to say scary, because he knows that there's nothing but piles of clothes in the corners, but... uncomfortable. 

There's probably some plushie facing him somewhere, and that's the cause of the staring feeling. Other than him, the room is empty. His own breathing is loud. It's a relief when he gets to the door and steps out into the corridor.

It's not much brighter than the bedroom. There's just enough light so that they don't trip and knock themselves out when stumbling to the kitchen or the bathroom at those early-morning schedules. Sion's set up a couple of nightlights meant for kids at the plug sockets at the base of the walls, and they cast the whole dorm in an odd almost-white light. 

One of them flickers as Sakuya walks past. He pauses to nudge it back properly into the socket. 

He doesn't need to go all the way to the kitchen to figure out where Ryo has gone.

The sound of Sion's heavy breathing is audible through his bedroom door when Sakuya pauses next to it. And before he makes it to the end of the hallway, he has to pass their bathroom - which damningly has the light turned on inside.

Just like in the bedroom, light spills from the gap beneath the door. It's yellow and painfully sterile and bright compared to the nightlights in the corridor. They barely do more than illuminate vague shapes and silhouettes - the bathroom light is such a contrast that Sakuya has to squint to look at it. 

He's overreacting.

Ryo isn't struggling to sleep again. He'd gotten up to use the bathroom, and that's probably what had woken Sakuya up as well in the first place. Just like that, Sakuya feels a weight leave his shoulders. He's back to blinking back sleep. He turns in place, muffling a yawn with his hand, seconds away from leaving when there's a sound from behind the door.

In the singular moment he pauses, the door clicks with the sound of a lock. Sakuya watches as it swings open and the hallway is suddenly bathed in yellow light - only blacked out by the silhouette of a person standing in the doorway.

"Ryo," Sakuya says, because he'd recognise the shape of his best friend from a hundred miles away. He's still turning on autopilot, ready to apologise and shuffle back to the warm space between his covers, but- "Ryo, your nose is bleeding."

Ryo stands beneath the swinging bulb. It flickers slightly. Sakuya's never noticed that before, but in the darkness it's like every imperfection is magnified until he can't look away. Ryo's skin is slightly pale, washed out from the odd mixture of lights illuminating them from both sides. 

His noise is bleeding. There's the slow emergence of red gathering on the divot above his upper lip. It looks almost black in the night.

Ryo doesn't react. At first, Sakuya doesn't think he's noticed. He just keeps standing there like he hasn't heard a single word - keeping completely still for long enough that Sakuya wonders whether he's going to collapse. He takes an instinctual step forward. He's not sure whether he'd be able to catch Ryo if he really did fall, but he does it anyway. 

That's what finally gets Ryo to move. It's only tiny - his eyes follow Sakuya as he approaches. Then his mouth opens.

"No," he says, "You're bleeding."

The light above them flickers.

"What?" Sakuya has stepped inside the bathroom without realising. He's not sure he can pinpoint when exactly it happened, and it's only important because he catches sight of himself in the reflection of the mirror. 

His nose is bleeding. 

Sakuya's hands fly to his face. He presses his fingers just above his lips, and it's like touching it finally does make it real. Just like that, his fingers come back with a dark red sheen at their ends. He can feel something warm trickling down his face. He doesn't have a chance to wipe it away before it drips into his mouth - and the taste of metal is so strong that he almost gags.

It fills every one of his senses. Instead of just the edge of his tongue, his entire mouth is coated with the taste of blood. The back of his throat stings when he tries to swallow and make it disappear, but the saliva in his mouth is thick and metallic and makes no difference to the fact he's still bleeding.

It's hot and disgusting. He thinks there might be something damp by his ears but he's too busy trying to wipe the blood from his nose with the back of his hand - except it does nothing, he only smears it across his skin and it keeps dripping into his mouth anyway. 

"What is this?"

Blood drips down his chin when he tries to speak. Sakuya's heart is pounding and when he looks at Ryo, it's like his friend can't see a thing that's happening. He stares with glassy eyes as his own nose bleeds sluggishly as well. 

"Ryo, talk to me."

Something is wrong. Something has been wrong for a while. 

Sakuya is still bleeding, but he has the odd sensation that he's not actually bleeding out. It's real in the sense that he can taste it and feel it and his head buzzes with the rational side of his brain yelling at him. But something about it feels too real - like a picture that has been brought up in such high definition that it's become too perfect to be real.

Ryo-

There is something watching them. Him? Sakuya is slowly realising that the eyes he'd felt in the bedroom have never left. His skull pounds with a headache he hadn't noticed building up, and when he turns to his friend, his heart is stammering.

It isn't him.

It's not Ryo.

The person that Sakuya has been sitting beside, standing beside, is not his friend. It looks like him and it might be his body, but is very much not his eyes.

His shape in the mirror is all wrong. There's something dark and dangerous creeping around the edges of the room and Sakuya has fallen straight into a trap he didn't know was being set up. The feeling of being watched crawls across his skin and melts into a terror so strong he cannot put it into words. 

He stumbles back.

"Ryo, snap out of it," but it's getting hard to speak. Sakuya's head swirls. He pushes Ryo away and tries not to gag when Ryo folds under the pressure of his hands, stumbling back into the room. Sakuya has to lean on the sink to keep his balance.

The light pops above their heads. It's darker - when did it start getting so dark? It flickers like the electricity is about to short out. The mirror reflects it all back at him - and when Sakuya catches sight of himself in the reflection, he can only see a dark shape crawling towards him.

"Stop this-" Sakuya says, but the words leave him so lightheaded that his knees almost fall out straight from beneath him. 

Ryo picks himself up from the ground and there's dark blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. He has red prints on his stomach that match Sakuya's hands. The dark shape in the mirror mimics his smile. In the moments when the light completely disappears and plunges them into darkness, Sakuya thinks he can see it in the room with them.

It's in the metal of the shower head. The drip of the faucet and the reflections caught in the puddles of blood. 

It's getting hard to think. Sakuya shouldn't be this tired, but his thoughts are slowing down. Ryo - not Ryo, the thing that's using Ryo's body like a puppet - steps forward and Sakuya can only slump further against the wall. 

His heart aches. His chest is so tight and he can't think. He can't yell out - he's frozen mute by fear - and yet he has to do something. The light is impossibly far above their heads and he should push Ryo away, but he sees him crumple again in his mind and he can't stomach it.

Sakuya's free hand grapples for something else to hold. He leaves bright red smears against the white porcelain, and his stomach twists when he sees the blood still dripping from his nose has turned black in contrast. 

There's a bottle of soap. His hands are so wet that they can't get a grip and Sakuya has to bite his lip - using the burst of pain like an anchor to fight against the exhaustion. The dark shape is in the mirror and so Sakuya lifts the bottle and smashes it.

It doesn't do anything. Plastic against glass is useless, but Sakuya grits his teeth and the Ryo-shaped thing makes a horrible noise like a scream caught beneath a choke. He keeps smashing the bottle against the mirror.

His eyes go light with huge white spots. There's a sudden weight on his back and hands pressed up against his throat. It's a disgusting perversion of how they might normally embrace - Ryo pulling at Sakuya's back - but there's no kindness in the motion now. 

The mirror gives with the extra weight. It shatters. Ryo's nails are razor sharp and Sakuya yells at the bright burst of pain that erupts from the soft skin of his neck when they sink in. They're forced forwards. His legs buckle beneath the weight of two bodies and as glass rains down onto the two of them, and the side of his head connects with the porcelain sink. 

"Sion-" Sakuya yells. He's not sure why he hadn't done it before. His mind is being pulled in two - the light above them has completely dimmed into nothing and he thinks that the mirror is gone - but now the thing is around them and it's in the bathroom and it's in Ryo and it's trying to get into Sakuya as well.

He's scared. He'd been scared before, but now the fear doesn't make him freeze, it makes him want to scream and run. 

He doesn't want Sion to see this - the blood still on the floor and covering both of them - but he tries to pull Ryo off of him and it does nothing. His arms are pinned to his sides and he barely has the energy to kick his legs. 

Ryo's weight on his back feels suffocating. Sakuya should be able to fight him off. He's done it a hundred times before - for all Ryo might manhandle him into hugs, it's only because Sakuya lets him. He thinks that some part of his mind had still been expecting that to be the case - and can't rationalise the fact that-

That-

He's not winning this. Oh god, he's not winning this. His eyes are heavy and he's not sure why, but moving his legs feels like kicking through mud and he can't pull his arms up. 

Ryo's small hands try to cover his mouth but Sakuya snaps at them. "Sion!" He screams, and he really does scream this time. He wants Sion to save him. He doesn't want to be here anymore, he's scared and he doesn't like it, and he's not even sure when the bathroom door closed but Sion will hear anyway if he yells loud enough.

"Sion! Sion!" His voice breaks embarrassingly but Sakuya doesn't even notice. He chokes on something wet and has to struggle for breath. His teeth aren't fast enough this time to bite down and Ryo presses his hand against his mouth with inhuman strength 

"S-" His voice is muffled. He sharply inhales through his nose but it isn't enough and his head is already so thick that the lack of oxygen means he doesn't even feel it when his head connects with the tiles on the floor. 

Someone is outside. Ryo's weight is suffocating and cruel and Sakuya is rapidly losing grip of consciousness, but that means it's only one person it could be. Sakuya won't cry but the sound he makes around Ryo's hand sounds like a sob anyway.

I'm in here. Help. Sion, Sion, please- Open the door-

It's like he's listening beneath water. Sion keeps speaking but he sounds achingly calm and none of the muffled weak noises Sakuya makes are audible through the door. All he needs to do is investigate - there's only so many places they could be, but-

Sakuya hears his own voice.

His own voice, speaking sleep-rough and heavy from the other side of the door. The thing using Ryo's body breathes close to his ear and Sakuya can hear himself tell Sion that it's okay. 

It's not. It's not okay, and there's no way Sion could believe it. 

It's something that should be impossible. If Sakuya was a little less-light headed he might even refuse to believe it. If he hadn't spent as much time as he has listening to his own voice on repeat - in songs and on livestreams and in content - he might even think it was a trick of the mind.

But the person speaking outside sounds exactly like Sakuya. They have the same inflections to their words, a perfect mimicry of his voice. It's muffled and it's not what he'd actually say - because he wants to scream and tell Sion that he's here, and that it's not fine, and that he needs to help - but it sounds just like him. 

It must look like him too. 

It's hardly the most impossible thing to have happened in the last ten minutes, yet this is what makes his stomach twist so violently that if he weren't already being gagged, he might be choking on his own intestines in his throat. 

He can see the emptiness in Ryo's eyes and the shadow in the mirror to know terror, and that this thing is evil. Yet it is this that seems worse than everything else. His mind is only just clear enough to process what this means - the cruel reveal of this new ability. 

Sion is outside speaking to something that is not Sakuya.

How long has this been happening? If Sion cannot tell that the real Sakuya is not standing in the hallway with him, would Sakuya be able to tell if he were faced with the real Sion? Would he realise?

How long has this been seeping between the cracks of the group? The attack on the bathroom feels like the roar of a tidal wave he hadn't felt cresting around him, the temperature of water reaching boiling without him realising. This isn't something sudden, he thinks with a sickening nausea. 

How long has Ryo been replaced? How many conversations has he held with the shadow instead of his friend, completely unaware of what was staring back at him?

Had the same thing happened to Ryo? 

Sakuya has never been scared by much before. Not properly, at least. But this is something that seeps into his bones in a fear that he can't explain other than complete and utter terror. He knows with a sudden clarity that he cannot win this fight, and what will happen to him afterwards.

Sion won't hear. The fake Sakuya outside - the shadow in the shape of Sakuya, playing tricks with their minds and pulling strings of their relationships, without any of them realising - tells him to go to bed. Sion cannot hear Sakuya trying to call for help. Sakuya cannot yell a warning no matter how much he attempts to scream behind Ryo's hand. 

There are footsteps leaving. 

And Sakuya is in here, pressed into the bathroom floor with something evil that is using his best friend's body as a puppet. Sion has no idea that the real Sakuya is choking. He can't hear above the voice of the fake.

There is a spider's web around the group. With every movement they've been making, they've been pulling invisible strings around their throats. Walking into a trap without realising it. The pieces have been set into motion long before Sakuya ever walked into the bathroom, and that realisation saps the energy from his body in its immense gravity.

And in the time that it's taken to listen, Sakuya has no energy left to scream again. His eyes are closing by themselves and he can't keep fighting to keep them open. The blackness at the edges of his vision crawls in closer and closer with each aborted breath he tries to take. 

There's something wet on the back of his neck. It burns hotter than the blood ever could, and maybe it's because some part of Sakuya is still praying for none of this to be real, but he thinks that Ryo - the real Ryo, the part that's being used like a puppet - is crying.

There are footsteps. They're heading away. Sion is leaving, and leaving Sakuya behind. 

A pair of fingers pinches his nose. If Sakuya had any more fight left to give, the darkness takes it away before he can even think to use it. He's not sure whether the black he sinks into is sleep or unconsciousness, but either way it means he's lost. 

Chapter Text

The dorm is silent when Sion wakes up. The quiet of the morning has settled heavy over his room, and even though it takes him a while to blink away the sleep from his eyes, it remains completely still.

That's... not unexpected. Ryo hasn't been sleeping well lately, and now that he's using medication to help, Sion isn't surprised that he might be finding it harder to wake up. And he'd seen Sakuya fairly late in the hallway last night.

There's a headache threatening to make itself known.

His temples ache, and sitting up to try and massage away some of the pain doesn't relieve anything. There's a container of painkillers and an empty glass of water left by the side of his bed. He'd been hoping he'd be able to sleep it off, but it doesn't come as a surprise that the ache hasn't fully disappeared.

He's been stressed lately. The headaches have been more or less constant for the last couple of days. They're not painful to the point where they're getting in the way of activities, but the low-level background sting like a fog at the edges of his vision is frustrating. Taking tylenol palliates it for a few hours, but never makes it fully disappear.

Or it just always comes back.

The bottle rattles in his hand when he picks it up. He'd like to go back to sleep, but without dealing with the headache first, it will be a frustrating waste of his time. He's been struggling to drift off anyway - with everything else going on, his worries and the weight on his shoulders as the leaders that he won't let the others see - and a headache won't make it any easier.

He could swallow the pills dry, but for the sake of a two-minute walk to the bathroom to refill his glass, he doesn't mind getting up.

"See what the members are up to," Sion mumbles to himself as he swings his legs free from the covers. A reminder spoken out loud. Checking on Ryo and Sakuya is probably a good idea. He doesn't think of himself as overprotective, but he has been worried lately.

The bedroom air is cool. Sion shivers. It hadn't been this cold last night, had it? He's wearing a tank top and boxers, and it had felt perfectly warm in his bed, but waking up more every second feels like he's coming into true awareness.

He'd discarded a pair of sweatpants on the floor yesterday, and pulling them on helps to alleviate some of the chill. The bottle of tylenol is returned to its position next to his pillow and Sion grabs his phone instead, slipping it into his pocket, and then takes the empty glass.

His slippers are cold but it's better than having bare feet against the freezing floor. The late morning light has filtered beneath the blinds enough to light up his bedroom, and the nightlights are off when he enters the hallway. Someone must have left the curtains in the kitchen open. The dorm is bright and awash with the fresh air.

The door to the bathroom is open. The hallway gives a view of only half the kitchen, but the world is quiet and tired. He doesn't need to check it to confirm that the silence is because the kids are still sleeping.

He pushes his hair back from his face and takes a step inside, turning on the light. Only to then come to a complete stop with his feet still on the boundary of the room.

The light doesn't come on. The bare bulb they've had since they moved in hangs in the air and refuses to work. For a second, Sion thinks that it's broken and he's only seeing what's expecting to see - because in the next moment he realises that there's broken glass.

It's not from the light. Thank goodness, because that means the light can be forgotten - it's bright enough that he doesn't need it to see inside - and he can widen his eyes to take in the smashed mirror instead.

There's glass in the sink. Most has stayed within the frame and only a few shards have dropped loose - the rest remaining in an almost spider-web pattern. Sion can see his reflection in the broken pieces. They draw lines across his face, separating parts of his skull and driving them further apart between the fragments.

There's no blood, which should be reassuring. There's a bottle of soap in the dish of the sink as well, and he wonders whether it had been knocked in at the same time. Surely something like this would have made noise. But Sion can't remember hearing a crash last night.

Something instinctual tells him not to get closer. He leans forward to get a better view of the cracks, but doesn't step towards it. In the end, he just has to decide it's a shattered mirror. Maybe something had fallen in the night - or Sakuya or Ryo had done it by accident.

He's not thirsty anymore. Instead, his headache is easily forgotten under the sway of the worry replacing it. He doesn't want to disturb the younger members, and there's no sign that either of them had cut themselves, but the fear burrows into the back of his head anyway. He doesn't need more guilt for not noticing something until it's too late.

Sion sets the cup onto the ground, telling himself he'll come back for it later. Then he abandons his mission to get water for painkillers and heads into the maknaes' room instead.

"Saku? Ryo?"

He doesn't get a response. The room is still fairly dark, the blinds pulled the whole way down. It's devoid from even the glow of electronic screens. Sion has to pause to let his eyes adjust properly - and he frowns when he notices that Sakuya's bed is completely empty.

"Saku, you better have gone to sleep," he says under his breath. The glass next to Sakuya's bed is also empty, and his sheets suspiciously abandoned. There's no way he'd still be awake from seeing Sion in the hallway last night - but he's also seventeen and kind of prone to making stupid decisions. It wouldn't even be the worst hours they've pulled as idols, but that's what makes the time they can sleep even more important.

It turns out he didn't need to worry, though.

He finds out where Sakuya had gone the moment that he turns to look at the other side of the room.

In Ryo's bed, both him and Sakuya are squashed into the same small space. Sakuya's foot is half hanging off the side and Ryo is pressed up against the wall. They're both tangled under the same covers and both still completely asleep.

Sion can't help the grin that spreads across his face. He laughs for a second at just how cute they are, then snaps a picture for safe-keeping. After a moment of consideration, he ends up sending it to their group chat as well.

Seeing Ryo and Sakuya hugging each other in bed definitely improves his mood. There's still a grin on his face when he returns to pick up his glass from the floor. It's only just beginning to fade when he arrives at the kitchen.

A strange smell grabs his attention. Sion thinks that it might be their trash can so he steps a little further away, but that doesn't seem right. It seems more sour than garbage - like it comes with a crawling sensation at the back of his neck, a bad smell accompanied by an even worse feeling.

The glass is set down again. This time next to the kitchen sink, whilst Sion doubles back on himself. It doesn't take long to identify their fridge as the source of the smell. There's not much in it - they usually live off the food they can buy or they're provided at the schedules themselves, and then order in for anything else.

The only food that tends to be kept in this dorm in particular is what they know they can eat before it goes out of date. That includes the ramen in the cupboards, the bottles of soda stacked in the corners, and the collection of snacks.

Looking past the water, all that's in the fridge is a carton of eggs, a punnet of strawberries and a container of chicken. It's dire, even for their standards. And the state that the food it in-

The eggs are clearly the source of the smell. Sion remembers making fun of Ryo a few weeks ago for what must have been the issue. The dial on the inside of the fridge says it's set to the correct temperature, but this carton of eggs has also long gone rotten.

It isn't just the eggs either. The water looks safe enough, but the strawberries have become speckled with a suspicious grey fuzz, a small pool of red-coloured water gathering to stain the paper at the bottom. There's a green sheen across the raw chicken. It catches the yellow light of the fridge like it's proudly on display.

The smell is so bad that Sion has to close the door almost immediately. It sticks in the back of his throat and doesn't dissipate when he tries to back away. His stomach curls.

He hadn't been hungry before, and he definitely isn't now. In fact, the smell lingering in his mouth makes him want to just give up and crawl back into bed anyway. He looks over to the glass now sitting next to the sink, but the thought of eating or drinking anything makes his stomach twist.

It's odd. A set of bad luck, one thing after the other.

Now the food, right after the mirror-

Sion straightens up in surprise. He'd completely forgotten about the mirror. He hadn't even checked to see if Ryo and Sakuya were okay - if they'd been hurt or cut themselves by accident, or even which one of them had done it. He'd gotten completely distracted by the fact they were sleeping cuddled up together.

He glances at their bedroom door. It's still completely silent, and he's still hesitant to wake them up. He can take a photograph of the broken mirror to send to one of their managers though. Anything they break is usually their own responsibility to fix, but he doubts that SM will want any of them to get cut attempting to clean up broken glass. Someone will need to sort out a replacement for it as well.

He has the camera app open as he makes his way down the hallway for what feels like the fifth time already today. He isn't looking up, which is why the voice catches him by surprise.

"Hyung?"

Sion stops where he is. He turns to look at Ryo and Sakuya's door, but it's still shut. The voice had been too clear to come from behind a closed door and it hadn't come from that direction either.

And it almost sounded like Riku.

He stares at the closed door for a moment longer. Then, slowly, he looks towards his own door open to his room. He isn't expecting to see anything different to how he left it, but his feet seem to disagree since they start taking steps forward in anticipation on their own.

There's a shadow that hadn't been there on his bed before.

Riku is sitting there.

His eyes are wide. His dark hair is still tufty from sleep and he's wearing a t-shirt that shows off too much of the tan expanse of his neck, dipping right down to his collar bone. He grins expectantly when he sees Sion approaching. "Hyung, I looked for you but you weren't here."

When had Riku arrived? Sion hadn't noticed anyone entering the dorm, but he'd also been distracted. Seeing Riku is a welcome surprise and one that he's never going to turn down, especially on a morning like this. The forgotten bottle of tylenol has been pushed away and Riku nudges it away further to create space for Sion to join him.

There's still lingering warmth to his bedsheets. He'd gotten used to the chill of the morning, but sitting with Riku makes it feel cold all over again.

"I didn't notice you arriving," Sion says. He thinks back to the mirror. "I need to send a message and then I'll be right back. You won't miss me too much?"

"I'll miss you," Riku says, pouting. He catches Sion's wrist before Sion can properly get to his feet. His grip is surprisingly strong. "Can't you just sit with me?"

He bats his eyelashes. Sion refuses to get flustered. Instead, he keeps staring at Riku until a pink flush spreads across his cheeks and he has to look away with a laugh. It's so endearingly Riku that Sion follows it up with a kissy face - enough to get Riku to finally drop his wrist, even if it's just so he can use both hands to bat him away.

It doesn't matter how soon Sion lets management know the mirror is broken. They won't be able to do anything about it until tomorrow at the earliest. Sion doesn't want to spend his free day figuring out maintenance requests either.

"Hyung," Riku pouts, and any protests Sion might have had remaining quickly disappear.

He leans back into the covers. His body is pushed side-by-side with Riku and even though it's late-morning, there's still something quiet about the atmosphere that makes it feel earlier. It's nice to just sit with no expectations for a while.

Riku leans his head against Sion's shoulder. He pulls up the blankets until they're covering their legs. His eyelashes brush against Sion's cheek when he moves. With Riku, it's hard to tell whether moves like that are deliberate. They're soft and flirty in equal measures, but that's so deeply intertwined with Riku's charm that Sion can't tell.

"It's warm here," Riku says. "Making me sleepy."

Sion hums. He'd been tired and aiming to get back to sleep, but at some point along the way it seems to have disappeared. The headache tugs at the edge of his vision. His stomach rolls when he thinks about the smell in the kitchen again, and he needs to remember to warn the others to be careful about the broken mirror in the bathroom.

Maybe originally he would have been able to fall asleep again. It would be easy, pressed up against Riku. A lazy morning is so infrequent that he wants to grasp onto the concept with both hands, wrap his arms around Riku's waist and pull them so they're flush and warm together. They could bathe in the pretense that they're a normal couple for once.

But in the end he ends up shaking his head. "Not after this morning. You can sleep though. Put your head on my lap."

Riku makes a noise. It's muffled by his face pressed into Sion's shoulder, but the displeasure is still clear. His eyes are big and dark when he looks up. "This morning? What happened?"

"The mirror in the bathroom is broken. The fridge might be as well - everything in there has gone off."

"It's 'cuz you only come over to ours to eat."

"Maybe. I don't know, I thought that most of it wasn't even that old."

"We've had schedules though."

"Yeah." That's a good point. He thinks it hadn't been that long since he last checked the fridge, but sometimes the days blur together when they're in the middle of promotions. When they seem to spend more time outside the dorms than they do inside, it isn't surprising when things go unnoticed for a few days.

Riku leans towards him until their shoulders bump together. "That's why we should be sleeping. The babies are asleep as well, and it's not like we have anything else to do today. Get some rest."

His voice is sincere. Something tugs at the back of Sion's mind, but it's washed away by the guilt when he turns Riku down again. "I haven't been sleeping well lately."

"Hmm?"

Sion nods. There's a cramp in his arm so he stretches it out as he explains. "Just... I keep having the feeling that I've been having dreams that I can't remember. It's probably nothing, but I think Yushi mentioned something about dreams before. I'm going to ask if he knows something about it. Or if Daeyoung has something for headaches."

Out of the corner of his eye, something-

It's odd. He can't place it. Something has changed, or something has appeared - or there's just something different. But Sion can't put words to what it is. Riku is still beside him and his face is still as open and caring, even if he's pouting again. The wall is right behind him. Maybe the shadows had shifted in the rising sun.

"You're going to talk to them? You have painkillers right here - it's normal to forget dreams, isn't it, hyung?"

Sion hesitates. "These dreams feel different."

Riku hums. "We've all been under a lot of stress with Ryo-chan lately. That might be it. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone is having weird dreams now. But - you know you can always talk to me? You don't have to bother anyone else."

That's true. Sion hadn't considered that. He knows everyone's been worried, but he hadn't thought that coming to Yushi and Daeyoung with concerns of his own would only make their own stress worse. He can see why Riku would think that would make sense, though.

It's the job of a leader to hold up the team. If Yushi and Daeyoung are equally stressed, then it would be selfish of Sion to cause them any more concern.

"Yeah. Thanks Riku-chan," he says whilst looking at Riku, just to watch his reaction. "Maybe I'll ask Yushi if we're being haunted, and get him to do an exorcism. At least then we might feel like we're doing something."

It's supposed to be a joke. In one of their early pre-debut talks, where all six of them had been in the practice room far too late, Yushi had told them all that he'd always had a supernatural-sensitivity. They hadn't even been practicing at the time, just lying on the floor and eating snacks.

Apparently, Yushi had never seen a ghost. But he'd been able to notice when they were around. He'd described it as a feeling like his eyes were being pulled somewhere - then promptly given up trying to explain in Korean and spoken in Japanese instead.

Sion hadn't caught most of it. He'd known the Japanese members had believed it, considering their simultaneous gasps and shrieks, and he'd caught Riku's eyes across the floor. They'd joked about a bit at first, but then Yushi had explained that he didn't want ghosts to overhear and target him because of that, so it had died down.

Sion had mostly forgotten about it. He's not sure why he even says it now - maybe he's hoping that Riku will laugh, or it'll bring the mood up slightly. With the series of bad feelings and bad luck they've been through recently, he wouldn't be surprised if they were being haunted by something. Once the thought runs through his head, he has to suppress a shudder. 

It seems surprisingly apt for everything that's happened recently. Or maybe Sion's just coming up with excuses to blame something else rather than just luck and himself.

Riku has fallen silent. He stays quiet long enough that Sion turns to look at him. "Are you okay?"

Another moment of silence. Then, Riku looks up at him through his eyelashes. "I'm tired, hyung," he says, "Come and sleep with me."

He pats the pillow. It does look comforting, but Sion doesn't want to go to sleep, even if he would have Riku next to him. He wants to be there when Sakuya and Ryo wake up, to make sure they're okay. He wants to check in with Yushi and Daeyoung - the sudden urge to make sure they're both okay. 

He's tired. But he's fighting the urge to fall asleep. "I can't. I'll lie down with you?"

Riku puffs his cheeks. He has one hand on Sion's wrist again, like he's worried he's going to suddenly get up and leave. Clingy.

"I'm not going anywhere," Sion tells him. "Here. Let me message the others first, and then-"

"No!"

Riku darts forward. He grabs Sion's other wrist before he can take his phone from his pocket, twisting so they're almost chest-to-chest. He drops Sion's arms like he's been burnt once he realises what he's done, but Sion...

There's something in Riku's eyes. Beneath the darkness, Sion thinks he can see something else for a moment. The room is suddenly colder, even if he hasn't been pushed out from beneath the blankets. The walls seem darker. 

"Are you feeling okay?" Sion asks. His mouth tastes odd. "Just let me do this, Riku, and-"

Riku looks at him. His expression is split between the familiar wide-eyed look and something harder. Then, before Sion can pull away or ask again or anything else, he leans forwards and presses their lips together. 

Chapter Text

Immediately, something is wrong.

Sion's not taken aback - he hadn't been expecting Riku to suddenly close the distance between them, but it's not a completely uncommon occurrence. It would be more welcomed if the conversation before hadn't been so strange. If Sion's head wasn't still hurting slightly, if Riku's hands weren't finding their way to his wrists instead of his waist, if the room hadn't suddenly been so cold. 

Riku's body heat seeps into Sion's own. But his lips are cold. 

"Come and sleep," Riku says in the moment when he pulls away. Sion shakes his head and so Riku leans in once again.

Every time they touch, some of Sion's resolve is worn down. The lack of air from Riku's kisses leaves him a little light-headed. There's time to spend sorting everything out later - for now, why can't he just sit and nap with Riku for a little while?

Riku hums into his mouth. Sion's hands come up to his back.

Then Riku swipes his tongue against Sion's lips and it brings him right back out of whatever complacency he'd been sinking into.

Riku's tongue is cold.

It isn't hot, the saliva in his mouth doesn't taste like the distant mint of toothpaste. Sion knows that the tongue is a muscle, but this feels like he's become distinctly aware of that fact. He's no longer tired, but it's like every inch of his body freezes up, overcome by a sick combination of horror and disgust. 

Riku nips his lip and Sion tastes blood. It's sharp and metallic and disgusting and Riku's tongue swipes over it again, and there's probably blood on both of their teeth. 

It's a combination of the taste and the fact he's suddenly been ripped from a sleepy fantasy land that makes him gag. It's the fact that his mind provides a comparison before his head can think through the pieces - kissing Riku feels like kissing a dead body. 

 His tongue is cold, devoid of the warmth that should be there. Sion is kissing something that, he is now realising, does not have an inch of life left within its body. 

It's not Riku.

It can't be Riku. This is something that has so clearly been dead for a while - cold and sticky and cloying with the way his hands are still pinned beneath wrists - cooling skin that he hadn't noticed before, the way that the room's temperature seems to have dropped to freezing. 

It's all wrong. It's so impossibly wrong, so disgustingly wrong that he pulls back the moment that he regains the ability to move.

Sion's mouth still tastes sour. The creeping sensation that something isn't right has come to a cresting peak, and he can't stop feeling the heavy weight of something dead inside his mouth. 

Riku stares at him when Sion tries to swallow and only ends up gagging again. It's so viscerally wrong that the sensation is burnt into his mind. He needs to brush his teeth - fighting the sensation to keep gagging and make sure his mouth no longer tastes like meat - he needs to wake up from this nightmare.

He's no longer tired at all. 

"Riku, I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me." His actions surprise himself, his words seem to be on a completely different train of thought to his mind. He's stumbling over apologies because it still looks like Riku in front of him.

It looks like Riku. But Sion's stomach lurches with the realisation that something is wrong - that it might look like Riku but it's not exactly acting like him. It's Riku's dark eyes and stupid laugh, but those are features that have been stolen, perverted into use by...

Whatever actually is sitting on the bed. Because it is not Riku. 

"Hyung, what did I do wrong?" Riku says. He starts getting up and Sion backs away, keeping the distance between the two of them. "Do you not like me anymore? You hate me?"

It's like a vice grip around Sion's heart. He stares at Riku, at the tan expanse of his skin and his fluttering eyelashes. Even when he searches, there's nothing about the sight that immediately clicks as wrong or out of place. The blankets pool around Riku's limbs. His weight is heavy on the bed and he pulls his legs up underneath him, blinking wide and siren-like. 

He's only missing one thing.

Sion's blood, from his bitten lip, has stained his own bottom lip. There's a smear on his chin where they'd bumped together. And something in Sion's mind screams danger when he sees it. A red flag to a bull - it is not Riku encouraging him to get closer, it is a predator wearing his skin.

"Hyung, what did I do wrong?" Riku's bottom lip wobbles. There's a flash of pink as his tongue comes out to lick away the blood. There's something dark staining the walls behind him. The shadows grow stronger and stronger and Sion realises with a start that he's gasping for air. 

"I don't hate you," he says. His mouth is dry with the distant taste of iron. The pain has faded to nothing so Sion worries his teeth over the cut, letting the sting keep him aware. Every instinct in his body is yelling that something is wrong - an uncanny valley that he can't identify, nothing he can put into words but so distinctly incorrect anyway - but it still looks like Riku.

Riku, who is close to tears. His cheeks are pink and his expression is pinched into something heartbreaking. "Then why are you leaving?"

He's twisting his body. Sion can see that he's getting ready to stand up, no matter how slowly he may try to disguise the movements. He takes another step backwards and Riku leans forward in turn. His feet touch the floor. He's pulled the covers so they still drape across him, but will fall away the moment he wants them to. 

Sion swallows dryly. It feels like a waking nightmare, yet there's no time to process anything. He just has to keep acting on his instincts.

Riku would never keep Sion from the other members. The moments they steal between each other are so tender because they're in the precious seconds where they're alone and free. Riku would be the first to make sure that Ryo and Sakuya were okay. 

If he'd seen the shattered mirror, he would have gone in there and checked their hands for cuts himself. He would have smoothed down Ryo's hair to keep him sleeping, and then checked that Sakuya had slept fine after being up late at night. 

He would have forced Sion to take the tylenol. Chased with breakfast because Riku notices when Sion only has a coffee in the morning. Like this, in the lazy morning with no responsibilities for the rest of the day, they would have finally spoken about - everything they haven't had the time to.

Riku's confusion, heart-ache that Ryo had seemed so resigned and the fact he hadn't been approached sooner. Sion's guilt for not noticing, feeling like it's still eating something important up from inside of him. 

The person in front of him has done none of that. Which is why Sion takes a step back again when Riku's feet touch the ground, and why he's already lined himself up with the door when the tension finally cracks into the same pieces as the mirror in the bathroom.

Riku lunges.

That precious distance between them is what saves his life. 

Sion is fast. He's had hundreds, if not thousands, of dance lessons, and his body is in incredible physical condition. When Riku flickers into something dark and unknowable and terrifying, Sion is already moving. 

He doesn't bother to take the time to turn around. This is his room and he knows the space by heart - he leaps back the moment that Riku comes towards him. The door is still slightly open and he doesn't need to fumble for the handle - he just trips out of it in his haste to get away, and slams it closed.

There's no sound. At the speed he was going, Riku should have collided with the wood with enough force that Sion could have felt the impact in the floor. Instead, the silence is even more sickening. When the scratching starts, it's only the fact that Sion is already swallowing down nausea that means he doesn't upturn his empty stomach onto the floor.

He's leaning his whole weight against the door to stop it from opening. But he can't stay here. If there's something dangerous in the dorm he needs to make sure that Sakuya and Ryo are safe - and he doesn't even know if he can hold the door closed for long.

Riku shouldn't be strong enough to beat the door down. Not with Sion's bodyweight forcing it closed on the other side.

But Sion is also realising that although it may look exactly like Riku, it very clearly isn't. 

There's nothing nearby. Sion jams his foot beneath the door and leans to grab a shelf. It's only just heavy enough - something temporary they'd put up to hold all their extra shoes, and it scrapes across the floor with a horrible sound. Shoes cascade to the floor and Sion's fingers turn white with effort, but he drags it until the door is jammed shut.

The scratching hasn't stopped. The handle shakes where it's now pressed against the back of the shelving until. There is a feeling that Sion can only describe as all-encompassing, suffocating dread choking through his throat. 

There's something wet on his upper lip.

Sion reaches up, half his body-weight still pressed against the shelves because he can't bring himself to pull away fully, and his fingers come away damp and red.

His nose has started bleeding at some point. There's something dark and coppery gathering in the corners of the hallway that he refuses to look at. It's impossible for the floor to be bleeding, but it's the same colour as the dripping from his nose down the front of his shirt. 

He tries to wipe it away. It smears across the back of his hand. Riku - not-Riku - scratches the door again, and Sion resists the urge to squeeze his eyes closed. He feels like a child trying to block out the monsters in the dark. Except there really is a monster - something evil that he knows in his bones without needing to have it confirmed - and the floor is bleeding.

Sion can't pull away from the shelves. Not whilst he's not the only one in the dorm. There's an impact that makes the whole structure jump worryingly forward. If Sion stops holding it back - will there be enough time to pull the maknaes out of their room? Or will he be damning all three of them?

"Ryo!" He calls. His voice sounds shrill. He's never heard it with that tone before. Usually he's the one laughing, even if things get hard, because he refuses to let the others bear witness to that sort of weakness. He's their leader and the one that keeps going despite everything. "Sakuya!"

He usually fights to keep the fear from ever showing. But now he feels reduced to half-hysterical, bleeding and holding back a creature from a nightmare. None of this should be happening. The way his voice breaks is the least of his concerns - not when he needs to get the maknaes out safely before anything else.

He hadn't been quiet calling them. For a moment he thinks they haven't heard. His nose is still bleeding and it coats his upper lip when he opens his mouth to yell again. But Sakuya and Ryo appear in their doorframe and he gasps a choked sigh of relief.

They're both wearing pyjamas. Their hair is tufty, with Sakuya's swept cutely across his face and Ryo with lines on his cheek from a crumpled pillow. 

The relief lasts less than a second.

They walk towards Sion like there's nothing wrong. There's no asking why he'd called or what he's trying to hold back. The terror in Sion's voice hadn't been disguised, but it's like neither of them care what that might have implied. There's no trace of fear in their faces when they look at him.

No sign of confusion either. No sign of terror or concern or anything other than a completely blank slate, steadily approaching.

There's bile in Sion's mouth when he chokes. He's not even sure what he'd been trying to say. An instruction for them to run and get out dies on his throat before he's ever formed a proper syllable. 

He's been stupid. Stupid and foolish and a failure, and he thought he'd experienced guilt before this, but he's now learning that had barely been guilt at all.

In his head, the thing shaped like Riku had come for Sion first. As the leader, it had come to take him out before he could warn the others.

He'd never paused to consider that instead... he'd been the third and final target. He'd never had a chance of saving Sakuya and Ryo - even by the time he'd realised that something was wrong, he'd already lost. 

"Saku," Sion says, "Wake up. Ryo-"

They don't look like Not-Riku. That had been completely fine until he'd noticed everything that wasn't fine - there had never been a visual or emotional sign that he'd been sitting next to an imposter. 

Here, instead, he thinks that in the light of the morning, he can see something terrified in Ryo and Sakuya's eyes. The crusting of blood around their noses, the way that Sakuya is holding one shoulder gingerly, stripes of bruises on their arms like they'd been in a fight.

"I can get you out of here," Sion says, "Wake up. This isn't you - hey, wake up. Saku, look at me. Ryo - it's hyung. Hey!"

They don't react. Part of Sion wants to keep trying. Part of him thinks this is where it ends, because he refuses to believe the truth that every instinct in his body is telling him: that it's already too late. Part of him thinks he cannot deal with the guilt of leaving them behind.

Not now. After every other way he's failed them. 

But the other part is louder. The part that sent him to become an idol, self-sufficient and stubborn as a teenager. That part of him smothers the guilt and focuses on the taste of blood. The human instinct to run when faced with something incomprehensible. He can feel guilt later - it is more selfish to die rather than face his own failures.

Sakuya leans forward. His movements are jerky. He could be fighting it, Ryo's eyes are wet, but it isn't enough.

His fingers grace Sion's wrist in a mockery of the way Riku had pulled him. Something snaps.

Like a string has been cut, Sion pulls away. He stumbles from the shelf against the door. He ignores the terror that the scratching sets deep inside his soul. The way that the blood is still pooling on the floor and the walls are getting darker than any colour he's seen before.

He leaves them behind. His mind tells him it's too late and he cannot do anything but obey his base instincts. Sakuya might be fast but he's stumbling at the moment, and Sion is faster. He gets to the end of the hallway, skids across the floor until he's at the very front of the door, and throws himself outside. 

The door slams shut behind him.

The swing of the movement, Sion turning around with all the speed he'd taken to run out of the dorm, translates into force. The sound rings out loud and clear into the hallway.

He stands there, panting and with his hands shaking, waiting for someone to come and say that he's making too much noise. He's not sure he'd be able to hear it over the ringing in his ears. He's not sure whether he wants someone to appear - because seeing someone else would make this feel less like a nightmare, but also because he's no longer sure he's able to trust his own eyes.

He keeps pulling the door towards him for at least a minute. Sakuya and Ryo on the other side don't make a move to open it again. There's no force to say that they're still trying to chase, now he's out of the dorm, and it's horror movie logic to say that they can't reach him here.

But Sion can't let go that easily. His headache pulses gently at his temples but it's much weaker compared to before. The blood that had streaked on his hands from the back of his nose has... disappeared. He imagines it's gone from his face as well. There's no evidence that anything had ever happened.

Just as quickly as it had started, the nightmare seems to have broken awake. That doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Riku's voice still rings in his ears, even if he now knows that they hadn't been his words. They'd tried to get him to stay inside, and if Sion hadn't just been attacked, he might not have given them a second thought.

Not-Riku hadn't wanted him to speak to the others. He'd asked him to rest, pushed his hands away from his phone and told him to focus on what was in front of him. And then he'd leaned forward with cold hands and a colder tongue.

Why would he encourage Sion to stay, if it weren't because that was exactly where it wanted him? Why would he gently encourage Sion to sit back and - and not tell the others what was going on?

It's not a shocking realisation. It's one he should have come to at the time, and hits like a belated wave now. Every moment Sion had spent, he'd been close to speaking to the others. Messaging them with photos, asking to leave, bringing up the odd behaviour and the headaches and dreams. But the moment he'd opened his mouth about that, Not-Riku and whatever was puppeting the maknaes would have lost the upper hand.

Sion finally steps back from the doorway, but he doesn't break his gaze even for a moment. His hands are still shaking. The combination of fear and adrenaline have his heart racing even though the danger has now passed.

He lets another minute pass that way. When nothing comes to follow even after that, he lets some of the tension bleed away. He doesn't stop watching the door, but there's something else he needs to do.

Sion pulls out his phone.

It takes a while to find the messaging app, and longer to scroll down until he finds the correct contact. His attention is split between still watching the door and focusing on the screen - and even though nothing happens, and at this point he isn't expecting it to, it still comes as a relief when he presses 'call' and lifts the phone up to his ear.

It means he can watch the door. The adrenaline has stopped making him shake, but there's nervous energy still flooding his body. Sion rocks back and forth a little as he listens to the dial.

He can't stop thinking about Sakuya and Ryo and how he left them inside there - but how it hadn't really been them, either. He's not sure how many signs he'd missed. He feels like a failure of a hyung; not just because he'd run and shut the door behind him, but because-

He's supposed to be protecting them. He should have protected them, before whatever was trying to get to him had gotten to them first. Sion has been wishing that Ryo had come to him with his sleeping troubles from the moment he found out that he was going on hiatus - when the news had come from the company and not from Ryo himself.

He should have noticed the sleeping issues. He's been beating himself up about that for a while, and he'd assumed that was causing the headaches and the odd sleeping patterns for himself.

Now... he's not sure if that's the case.

"Hello?," Riku says on the other side of the line. It's a relief to hear his voice. Sion had expected that, and yet there's still a weight off his shoulders. "Hyung, why did you call me?"

It's the same voice that the Riku in his bedroom had used to speak to him. Half-asleep and teasing, something warm just beneath the surface. Sion could recognise it anywhere. He'd- well, he'd thought he could recognise it anywhere.

Now, he can't help but imagine the lips moving on the imposter, with the perfect imitation of Riku spilling from its mouth.

"Where are you?" Sion asks.

"Eh?" Riku says. "I'm at the dorm. Do you want me to come over? Is everything okay?"

Riku has been worrying about Ryo just as much as Sion, if not more. If Sion's worry is laid with an undertone of guilt - for not being approachable enough, not seeing the strain until it was too late - then Riku's is laid on a bed of confusion. Sion doesn't think he's stopped thinking about the conversation he'd had in the hallway.

Sion bites his lip. He waits for the door handle to turn and when it doesn't, he sighs. He hates his mind for doubting whether this is real. But he casn't risk being tricked again. "I just wanted to hear you."

Riku makes a noise. There's a moment of silence, but Sion doesn't say anything more and so Riku speaks to fill the gap instead. "I saw the photo you sent. Aren't the babies so cute? I hope you didn't go and wake them up afterwards, they need the sleep after everything."

He hadn't woken them. They'd gotten up by themselves, except they hadn't been themselves at all. Then Sion hears it - in the background of the line there's a noise that isn't just the rustling of clothes or Riku's soft breath into the microphone. There's the sound of boiling water getting louder, and Daeyoung speaking to someone.

"Where are you?"

"Eh? In the dorms. Hyung, I already said that - you're acting odd, is everything okay?"

"Where in the dorms? Is there someone with you?"

Another pause. "In the kitchen. Daeyoung's here, Yushi's just gone to find a clean pair of chopsticks for ramen. Do you want to say something to them?"

Daeyoung had stopped talking, listening to what Riku's saying. Sion bites his lip again, until this time the pain forces him to think clearly. There's no reason that Not-Riku would have access to the real Riku's phone. It had clearly been hoping the element of surprise would cripple Sion long enough to-

Well, he's not sure what to. But the moment he'd pushed Riku away, he'd been on the winning side of the fight. He wouldn't be surprised if it's now licking its wounds, regaining its strength - the reason Sakuya and Ryo haven't followed out either.

Like that, he convinces himself it's fine. And once he's realised that it really is Riku on the other side of the phone, that he's safe with Daeyoung and Yushi and nowhere near the dorm, it's like something snaps. Sion presses his free hand to his mouth to muffle any noise of relief threatening to escape.

He's safe. He's out of there. Oh god, he's left Sakuya and Ryo behind, but if Not-Riku had been trying to persuade him to stay behind then... that's exactly what he should have done.

He needs to warn the others.

"I just want to hear you," Sion says instead. His mouth moves before his mind can process what he's saying. He's backed up against the wall behind him without realising, and at some point it's started bearing his weight. The adrenaline truly has disappeared now, and he's been left weak and drained.

"I'm here," Riku replies. It should be Riku panicking and Sion the one to laugh it off - because nothing seems as bad when you're smiling - yet they're in these positions anyway. "I'll always be here to pick up the phone when you call me. Yushi's coming back to his ramen now - Daeyoung it's fine, stop looking over all worried! I'll move to my room if you want to chat in private, hyung."

"No," Sion tells him immediately. "All three of you, stay where you are. There's something wrong. I'm going to tell the managers that we're all ill and it's contagious, then I'm coming over."

Riku is silent. The noise in the background has faded to nothing. Sion wonders if he's been put on speaker, whether all three of them are listening with straight faces. The fact that none of them protest is telling. It isn't just Sion who's felt something off these past couple of days then. The others have also had enough happen to them to not even bat an eyelid at his strange request.

He's not sure whether that's reassuring or not.

"I'll explain everything when I get there," Sion says. "Do not let Sakuya or Ryo inside."

Chapter Text

Maeda Riku, phone search history:

(seven days ago)

--- food poisoning symptoms

--- how to tell if you have food poisoning

--- can only one person get food poisoning from eating the same thing

--- can you get food poisoning from drinks

--- can you get food poisoning from bottled water

Message to: Sion hyung ❤️

we were out of bottled water at our dorm, so I took one from yours !! just in case you wondered where it went

hyung i think there was a manufacturing issue with the water ㅠㅠ

it made me ill ㅠㅠ

went back and threw the rest of the case out for you !! let me know if any of you also feel bad, i bought some ginger

-----

(three days ago)

--- relaxing music to fall asleep to

--- ASMR 3 hour playlists

--- why am i tired but can't sleep

--- what to do when you can't sleep

Message to: Daeng-Puppy 🐕

odd question

do you think something has happened to the lights lately? it seems darker than before

sion hyung said they've been flickering and playing up in their dorms, but there hasn't been anything like he said here

I've noticed that too!

Maybe the building electricity is playing up?

I'll see if I can ask someone tomorrow ^^

Sleep well hyung~

thank you daeyoung-ie! reliable as ever

-----

(one hour ago)

--- evil supernatural beings what am i being haunted by

--- demons vs ghosts

--- how to tell whether you're being haunted by a ghost

--- how to know if someone has been possessed

--- signs of possession

--- how to perform an exorcism

-----

Riku's phone sits in front of him on the table. It's face down and he hasn't touched it in a while. It's forgotten in favour of looking at the pale faces around him - the chair he's pulled up so that he can sit close to Sion, Yushi across from them, and Daeyoung silently tapping his knees with the pads of his fingers.

Sion had flinched when Riku had tried to lean it. It hadn't even been a big movement. He'd only been trying to bump their shoulders together, an act that he was hoping would soothe himself as much as it might provide comfort to Sion. It didn't look like he'd meant to jerk away. But he had done anyway.

It's... understandable.

They'd all sat and listened to the tale. Sion's hands wrapped around a hot mug of coffee that Daeyoung had given him for the stress.

Riku had passed Sion some damp tissue to wipe away the blood from his nose. Sion had taken them and stared into his eyes for slightly too long. That was before he'd explained, so Riku hadn't known why.

He hadn't liked it at the time, though. It wasn't like Sion was looking at him, but instead as if he was searching for something much deeper. There'd been something tense and almost scared in his eyes as he'd searched Riku's face. And he'd flinched when Riku had leant near.

Now, he sits still clutching the bloody tissue in his hands. The mug of coffee has long since been finished, and Daeyoung hadn't offered to refill it. Yushi's expression is completely flat and Riku thinks he's trying to pretend that they aren't all glancing at him out of the corner of their eyes.

"That's it," Sion says. "I called you and that confirmed what I'd already guessed - that the thing in the dorm wasn't you at all. Management has approved a few days off for us, but only because we were supposed to have a week off anyway. They'll be expecting us to have recovered before Saturday."

That isn't long. A couple of days seems like nothing in the face of what they've just uncovered. It's endlessly better than nothing, and Riku is so thankful for that - but that's only because he can't imagine coming face-to-face with Ryo and Sakuya and not having his stomach turning inside-out.

They've been listening in silence mostly, but Sion leans back into the chair and tightens his grip on the bloody tissues. He's finished talking, then. But Riku doesn't know what to say.

His instinctual response to comfort the youngest kids isn't happening, because they aren't here. He's a little numb with horror that hasn't set in. It's mostly when he goes to look across the room to check they're okay that he properly feels their absence.

And beneath that, he'd want to go and comfort Sion.

But an imposter had worn his face and perverted it. Used their relationship to turn it into something manipulative.

Riku can't blame Sion for flinching back. He's never doubted his own mind in that way, and he can't begin to process what it must have been like. There's some part of him that wishes it hadn't been his face, that selfishly wishes it could have been a different member. Then there's some part of him that feels this odd glee. Like it's proof of Sion's feelings for him under everything else.

Neither of those parts last long. Not when Riku identifies them and immediately discards them far, far away.

"Saturday," Daeyoung says. He'll always be reliable and the first one to step up when Yushi and Riku are still sitting in silence. "That gives us time. We can make a plan."

"A plan against what?" Riku asks. "We're really saying it's a ghost?"

And again, all three heads turn to look at Yushi.

"This dorm hasn't had anything nearly that bad happen to us," Daeyoung says. Giving Yushi a little more time to respond. "We noticed that the lights seemed dimmer. Riku hyung messaged me about it. And - hyung, you'd already noticed odd things before this? I don't think anything like that has happened to me."

Yushi hates the eyes on him. Riku knows this. He'll happily talk about something he loves or he'll dance in front of a camera for an audience of a million - but when there's only a few of them, and it's people he cares about, he wilts under their gazes.

But he doesn't have a choice. 

"I noticed something was wrong a while ago."

Sion sits up straighter. "What? And you didn't say anything?"

Yushi glares at him. "Not wrong in that way. I didn't think it was dangerous."

"You didn't think it was dangerous?" Sion doesn't get angry often and his voice is only slightly raised now. If it were anything other than the fact that Ryo and Sakuya had fallen prey to the thing, Riku thinks he would have heard Yushi without saying a word first. 

Something that he'll need to do anyway. Getting on his nerves is one way to make Yushi completely shut down, and they need his knowledge valuably. Daeyoung creeps closer to Yushi's side, making a subtle effort to show that not everyone agrees with Sion. Even if he did, Daeyoung wouldn't show it now. 

"There'll be a reason," Riku says. He knows there will be a reason - just like with everything Yushi does that's important. 

Yushi nods. His eyes are still hard and his fingers have balled up in his trouser legs, gripping the fabric. He dares Sion to say something back - but Sion just leans forward and rests his forehead in his hand, the other one distractedly pushing his hair away from his face.

"This isn't the first sign of paranormal energy I've noticed in our dorms," Yushi says. "Lots of people die. That means lots of ghosts. Most are just confused and disappear after a few minutes. Only a few ever are bad - and even then they usually pass through. They don't have the energy or intent to stick around."

Riku swallows. He's heard Yushi's story of seeing a ghost as a child before, but only once. He'd seemed spooked by it back then - even though it had been years in the past even at that point. 

Even then, he'd explained it as something he wasn't even actually seeing. Instead, he had the ability to notice things that other people wouldn't, or realise the significance of a strange occurrence that most people would just write off as odd. 

"They use their energy to make changes in the real world. Either by accident or just a by-product of being around. The more you notice-" Yushi cuts himself off. 

Daeyoung finished for him. "The more you're in danger."

There's a beat of silence as that settles in. Sion's hands are pale against the bloody tissues. His body is tight with tension. He has so much pent-up stress but he's refusing to take it out on Yushi again, so now it's just eating him up from the inside. 

Riku reaches over and rests his hand against Sion's, covering his fist with the palm of his hand. The fact that Sion's gripping the tissue makes their skin colour difference stark. 

This time, Sion doesn't flinch or pull away. Riku doesn't need to move. The weight of his palm is enough of a sign that he's here.

Yushi nods. "They don't have to use as much energy. They can watch so... I don't let them notice."

This makes Daeyoung lean forwards. He looks older like this - around the table with the rest of them. He's always so sensible that Riku finds himself leaning on him without thinking, but he really is so young beneath it all. "Hang on. Is this safe to discuss then? If-" 

He waves his hand in the air. Riku fills the blanks: if the ghost can hear what they're saying. If that's the case, then Yushi has just placed their most valuable card face-down on the table. 

"I told management we were sick," Sion says. "We can't leave now. If any of them realise we've gone out, the lie falls through."

In only a few moments, the tension has mostly drained away. Sion's eyes are focused now. He's replaced the stress and directed the adrenaline into something else - the concept of what they might be able to do next. It's what makes him such a good leader. Riku just hopes he isn't burying something important in his haste to keep going. 

Yushi shakes his head. "It sounds like it's used too much energy." His brow is furrowed. There's something he's thinking but isn't saying out loud. 

"Yushi," Riku says, "Start from the beginning. Tell us what you think has been going on. We'll stop asking questions until you're done, unless we need more detail."

"You're right. We're not going to get anywhere if we keep assuming things that he just hasn't gotten around to explaining," Daeyoung says.

Sion stays silent, but nods his agreement. They all look at Yushi again, who presses his lips together and frowns. It takes a moment for him to collect his thoughts into what he wants to say first. It's okay - the others are willing to wait patiently. 

Eventually, Yushi starts speaking again. "Sion hyung, you were right when you said it seemed like it was trying to stop you from talking to us. I would have noticed that Ryo was under its control - but any of you might have noticed as well."

There's a blank look on some of their faces, so he continues. "There are always... signs. Anyone can notice the presence of a ghost. It's dependent on about a hundred different factors, but it mostly just seems random. Like- Daeyoung could have seen Ryo and noticed, for no reason, that he had a temperature."

"And the more you look for things that are out of place," Daeyoung finishes, "The more likely you are to notice them. The less energy it takes."

Yushi nods. "Yes. The less energy it takes the ghost to have an effect - but also the less energy it takes us to notice it. And if we talked to work together, that's when you start noticing what doesn't seem right."

It's Sion who looks up this time. He swallows heavily. "So... all of this happened to Ryo? The ghost targeted him first?"

"Yes."

"And he didn't speak to any of us. So he didn't have the chance to communicate and confirm that... maybe he wasn't just seeing things. Because that's why he went to the psychiatrist - because he thought he was having hallucinations."

Yushi nods again. "It's clever," he says slowly. "It's been watching us for a while. We know that it can take the form of the members, so it's possible that it used our images to make Ryo think he was talking to us. When really the ghost was using that to pull him even further into - an easy target."

Riku's stomach twists. It makes sense. He's not even sure it's a conclusion he hadn't come to himself - because Yushi saying it doesn't feel like a surprise. Instead, it has the cold sinking feeling of a realisation he should have had a long time ago.

That meeting he'd had with Ryo in the hallway. It had seemed odd at the time. Riku's felt confused about it for a while, but mostly because he'd wished he'd said something else. Like if he'd chosen the right words - like he was playing a game, pre-set dialogue options - Ryo might have opened up more.

Now, he thinks back and his chest aches. Ryo's replies had seemed slightly weird. It had been like there was something he assumed Riku knew, or that he'd done, and that had manifested itself in a strange disconnect between what they'd said to each other.

Had the ghost stolen his face already, by that point? Had it already spoken to Ryo using Riku's voice, telling him things that only pulled him away? Playing with Ryo's beliefs in a sick little game, all whilst Ryo thought it was Riku he was talking to. 

Daeyoung and Sion are equally as silent. Riku imagines they're coming to the same conclusions. 

"That's why it went after Sakuya next," Yushi says, not taking the time to let it sink in like everyone else. "They share a room."

"He was most likely to have noticed something," Sion echoes. "I thought I saw him in the hallway last night. How do I know if that was him?"

Yushi hums in thought. "You don't."

"The mirror was broken in the morning. He just told me to go back to bed. The ghost must have wanted to stop me from going any further and realising something was wrong."

Again, Yushi nods. "It would have taken a lot of energy. I think... Sakuya broke the mirror. The ghost wouldn't have done that. It's too obvious."

"I tried to check up on them," Sion says, "But they were asleep, so I let them rest. I would have brought up the mirror to the members eventually though - I was only going to send it to management then, but - it wouldn't have known that."

"The mind doesn't fight as much when it's sleeping," Yushi says softly. "It takes less energy. You're more likely to dismiss everything as a strange dream. You said that Riku kept asking you to go to sleep?"

Sion nods mutely. Yushi purses his lips together, and it falls on Daeyoung to finish the line of thought he's left hanging, even if they've already all come to the same conclusion. 

"It lost too much energy when it possessed Sakuya. But it suddenly couldn't let Sion hyung go - because he was going to tell us - so it tried to get him to sleep. To make him more susceptible. And when hyung refused, it tried to overpower him."

"I can't say how strong it is," Yushi says. "It was weak when you overpowered it, so that doesn't mean much."

He might not have gotten away, if the ghost had been at full strength. 

Someone else might have said it with a little more care. They might have pulled their punches, considering the three others around the table were still reeling from everything else they'd just been told.

Yushi doesn't. And Riku appreciates that. Something in his chest feels hollow and hopeless, but at least he knows where they stand. There's nowhere further to fall than this. They can only gather themselves together and start a plan to fight back.

If he really thinks about it, they surely have to be past the worst of it. They know what they're up against now. The illusions and the nosebleeds and everything else that must be connected - the gone-off food, the flickering lights and the insomnia. 

"I even joked that I was going to tell you we were being haunted," Sion says dryly. He finally sits up properly. He pushes his hand through his hair again and then brings it down palm-first onto the table.

It isn't a loud sound. Sion isn't violent. But it is enough to get all three of them to start paying attention again. 

"It's weak," Sion says. He looks at Yushi, who silently nods to confirm it. Then he pulls his palm into a fist. "And we only have a few days. Have you ever done an exorcism before?"

Yushi stares at him. He shakes his head mutely. 

"Could you do one?"

Again, Yushi just stares. Riku can practically see the click-click of his brain whirring behind his eyes. He won't say anything until he comes up with an answer he means. But with every second he stays quiet, Sion's bravado starts to flicker. There's an edge of desperation to the way that he's waiting, and Riku's not sure anyone else even notices.

Except, Daeyoung gets there first. "We'll work it out," he says. "There's nothing that Yushi can't do when he puts his mind to it. And we'll be doing everything we can to help."

It has to work, is the part he doesn't say. It's not something that needs to be spoken aloud - they all know it. 

With only four of them, it seems too quiet. 

Chapter Text

It's only the morning after Sion's revelation that Daeyoung is finally haunted.

Or, at least, it's the first haunting he can identify. He hasn't been struggling with odd dreams like Sion, or with slight insomnia like Yushi. He hasn't noticed any of the food in the dorm going mouldy - but he's usually the best at clearing out and keeping on top of expiry dates anyway.

He'd noticed the lights. That's one thing: the lights in the dorm that don't seem to light up the dark corners like they used to. The shadows seem longer and the rooms feel colder. He half expects to see frost on the window sills despite it only being autumn.

He doesn't notice the lights changing now. Maybe that's why he gets taken completely by surprise.

It's early in the morning. Daeyoung might not have been struggling to sleep, but he finds that he can't stay in bed too long these days either. There's something uncomfortable about knowing that the ghost finds them easier to reach through dreams. It's uneasy enough that Daeyoung, despite sleeping normally, wakes up earlier than usual.

The sky is bright and cloudy. It's the kind of grey that's heavy with the smog of the city, but with a sun shining so close behind the clouds that it seems oddly bright anyway. He can hear Riku and Sion talking in low voices from Riku's room, so he doesn't hang around in the hallway.

The kitchen is quiet. Daeyoung considers making everyone breakfast, but ultimately decides to wait. They don't tend to be heavy eaters in the morning. The last thing he wants is to force them to face the day with heavy, uncomfortable stomachs.

The food is all in date. He makes a mental list of what he could cook anyway. Even if they're not up for breakfast, he can make an early lunch.

It feels like he's searching for ways to be useful. Daeyoung... isn't afraid to admit that's the truth. Riku and Sion have taken the brunt of the weight of the hauntings. Yushi is crumbling under the pressure of having to execute an exorcism. If there's anything Daeyoung can do to make life a little easier for them, he's going to do it.

There are a couple of bowls in the sink. That's good - he can do the washing up. It's pressure from small things like that that others don't need to be worrying about.

He rolls his sleeves up and stands by the sink, turning the hot water on.

It doesn't start.

There's a second that seems to stretch on for much longer than it must in reality. The sink makes a strange gurgling sound and the faucet shakes a little where it connects to the base. It sounds like the water is struggling to get free. Maybe the pipes have come loose - or the noise is from the strain of trying to make water come when there's nothing there.

Daeyoung stares. Something awful creeps across the back of his neck. He isn't expecting something to happen but part of his mind must be prepared for something anyway. Without a conscious thought, he pulls his hands away from under the faucet in the nick of time.

What comes out is not water.

It's blood.

It doesn't take long to identify. It's thick and dark and so perfectly rust-coloured when it hits the porcelain of the bowls beneath it. It comes out faster than the water would and Daeyoung is too frozen in place to stop it anyway. The first bowl fills in a matter of seconds and then overflows into the basin below it.

There's something sharp in the air. It smells metallic, though Daeyoung hadn't known a smell could be described that way until now. He can't tear his eyes away from the blood. There's an overwhelming sense of revulsion that crashes through his body like a tidal wave.

He's never felt fear like this before. It's not natural. Staring at the blood - which fills the sink slowly, despite the fact that it should be draining away, the impossibility that is the fact it only keeps rising - there's only a dawning sense of horror.

The magnitude is indescribable. It's nothing like he'd thought. Even if he'd been expecting it - even knowing what the ghost could do, or how it could make him feel - pales in comparison to how it leaks from every pore in his body.

His own blood is ice cold as it pumps through his veins. There is something primal about the fear. Every ancient instinct in his body has frozen in place, swirling with horror and fear and this heavy dread that chokes up his throat. He cannot look away. He cannot break eye contact with the sink and he cannot move. He keeps watching as the blood fills the sink, and when he thinks it might finally be over, it starts to overflow.

The cupboard beneath it is pale. It makes the blood stand out more as it trickles down the shiny plastic door. The pace almost seems steady and mocking, and Daeyoung watches as the blood finally begins to pool on the floor around his shoes.

His head hurts. He doesn't know if his own nose is bleeding. He doesn't feel tired but his head is spinning, and any blood dripping from his face would be invisible against the endless tide puddling on the ground.

He- he wishes he were wearing shoes. He wishes he could pull away. He wishes he could do anything but just stand there and watch.

The blood stains his white socks. It seeps into the fabric and turns it this brilliant, sickening, ugly shade of red that fills his throat with something bitter. And he wishes that was the worst part - because if it were just looking that would be awful, but the actual worst part is the feeling.

Not just the all-encompassing fear. Not the sense of horror that buries itself in his bones and makes him feel like there is nothing that will ever make it better.

The blood is hot.

Which means, to his terror-addled brain, that it is fresh. Just like how he somehow knows it is human. There is something he cannot put into words about how it feels. The disgust and the self-loathing that mix with the horror, the thundering of his heart and the spinning of the world around him.

It feels like a message. There is not just fear, there is malicious intent.

Then, just as soon as it had started, the blood disappears.

His socks are clean and white again. There is no sign they'd ever been stained - apart from one single drop of red, where he reaches up and can confirm had come from his sluggishly-bleeding nose.

The sink is empty. There are no stains on the sides, or rims of crimson left on the bowls. The faucet is only dripping slowly. The pool of water that has collected is only a couple of centimetres deep.

Daeyoung swallows. He takes a step back to confirm he can move again. He takes a tissue and cleans the blood from his nose.

Then he swallows, and starts to wash the dishes anyway.

———

Later, Yushi tells Daeyoung that he thinks the ghost doesn't have enough energy for person-sized hallucinations. Not ones that could appear long enough to cause lasting damage, at least.

It only is slightly reassuring. They know it's possible, is the issue, because the fact it's a possibility means they can never really truly trust anything. Even when Yushi says he thinks that the ghost is spending its energy on smaller hallucinations - keeping them scared and jumpy, using small bursts of their horror like steps back up to full strength - it is not reassuring.

He also thinks that it is taking energy from Sakuya and Ryo. There has been no sign of them leaving the dorm. It is comforting in some way, to know they are safe within the walls of their own home and not about to chase the other members down. But then Daeyoung thinks about their faces, screwed up and terrified in the den of the ghost, and any comfort he'd found evaporates.

They are being isolated. It means there is no chance for them to attack the others, but equally no chance for the members to try and break the control.

The rest of the day, the hallucinations are sporadic but haunting. They do not all need to be witnessing the injected terror. The knowledge that a hallucination could begin without warning and without prevention at any time is enough. They're all jumpy. There is something uneasy and fearful in the dorm at all times, like a bad smell clinging to the walls.

It's late afternoon by the time they get the notification for their deliveries arriving.

Sion and Riku head down together, whilst Daeyoung and Yushi review the plan. They've decided not to do the exorcism immediately. With Yushi still hesitant and the fact that they're all missing key information, it seemed more sensible to gather information first.

Even that sounded easier than it actually was.

Yushi had never done an exorcism. His knowledge of the supernatural extended to being able to notice paranormal activity, and that was it. As a child, his parents had taken him to a shrine - and after they'd spent an entire day peering at him and asking questions, Yushi had simply learnt not to speak of what he noticed.

His family had been convinced it was something he'd grown out of. It wasn't uncommon for children to be slightly more connected to spirits.

Riku had turned to the internet to know what to order. It had been difficult to find sites that seemed legitimate - even with Daeyoung and Sion turning to Korean websites to attempt to speed up the process - and even harder to find places that would deliver by the next day.

For the exorcism, they'd ordered as much as they could from a wide range of cultures.

Based on western folklore, they'd ended up with salt, a sprig of dried lilac, hazel wood, 'genuine' crucifixes and a bottle of holy water. The water seemed murky and filled with sediment when Daeyoung held it to his eye, but he'd kept his mouth closed about his observations.

It would only be unhelpful to say. They weren't relying on any of the items being effective, so casting doubt before they'd even begun would only bring morale down.

Daeyoung had added a few Korean rituals as well. A small bag of dried red beans that looked like it came from a supermarket. He'd considered offering the spirit a meal, but decided against it - imagining cooking for something that had actively possessed two of his dongsaengs seemed stomach-turning.

Now, Riku and Sion are collecting the other set of orders they'd made. Half the information online only spoke about hunting ghosts rather than exorcising them. They'd been working on such limited knowledge anyway that - although seeking the ghost out didn't seem like a good idea - anything that might be helpful had been tossed into the cart.

Riku and Sion both have their arms full when they enter through the doors. Riku's dark hair is stuck to his forehead. He dumps the boxes he's carrying as soon as he steps through the doorway - leaning back against the wall to wipe his forehead and peel off his mask and cap.

Sion makes it all the way to the living room before doing the same.

"Is this everything?" Daeyoung asks. He might have had an easier time carrying the weight up all of the stairs - with the masks, their only way of minimising the chance of any SM staff recognising them. But Riku and Sion had volunteered first, so he'd kept his mouth closed.

Riku gives him a thumbs up. "This is everything," he says.

He kicks off his shoes. Daeyoung goes to hand him the pocket knife and Riku flinches. In the entry way like this, leading into the kitchen instead of the living room, it's only the two of them visible.

"I'll help carry them to the living room," Daeyoung says before Riku can start to spiral any further. There's something painful in his chest. The thought of Riku not being able to trust his own two eyes - when Daeyoung is real - stings.

He takes the nearest, larger box. Riku follows with the second, smaller one, and visibly relaxes once Yushi and Sion are visible again. If they stay like this, with everyone in their line of sight at all times, they cannot be tricked.

Daeyoung refuses to believe otherwise.

Inside this set of boxes is the investigative equipment. Two EMF readers from different brands. They're only planning to use one at a time, but then double check the results with the second. Just to be sure. There's a spirit box meant to scan through radio frequencies - allowing the ghost to use sound clips to communicate.

They already own a thermometer, for some reason. Yushi had straight up refused to let them add a Ouija board to the cart, but Daeyoung doesn't think any of them had been too keen on that idea either.

They're not looking for signs.

They already know it's here. And they know it's trying to hurt them, drive them apart and play with their minds until they don't know who to trust. Playing off their isolation and their fear.

And the thought of Ryo and Sakuya. Daeyoung hopes they're okay. He hopes it feels like they're just sleeping. Or maybe that they're given more autonomy whilst the ghost isn't actively using their bodies.

He hopes they're not too scared. He keeps sending them both messages - as if by chance they might look across their phone screens and the words will reach through the possession. He's even started painstakingly translating them to Japanese.

If they're going to catch a glimpse of what he's trying to tell them (that they're okay, that they'll be safe eventually, that Daeyoung is hoping they're not too scared and that they've never left his mind), it'll have to be easy to understand. He's not sure if it's having any effect on them at all, but it makes him feel like he's doing something at least.

"That's the last of it," Sion says. He's pulled out a black electronic box, which is what most of what they'd ordered looks like. With a press of a button on the top though, a grid of pale green laser beams is cast across the room. "This is a motion sensor."

"Do we have to turn the lights off for it to work?" Riku asks. He waves his hand through one of the beams and there's a high pitched beep.

Daeyoung shudders at the thought. "We could just lower them?" He suggests, and the way Riku immediately latches onto that says he wasn't the only one slightly apprehensive. The dark corners of the room already feel too dark.

The shadows are longer. He's not sure what's come with the changing seasons and what might be the result of the ghost.

"We need to start soon," Yushi says. "It'll get dark."

They know the ghost can impact the lights. Daeyoung isn't sure whether the brightness of the dorm has any impact on how powerful it is. Hallucinations can happen in the middle of the day - that's what makes them so hard to spot, and so easy to believe.

But something about the dark seems more vulnerable anyway. He keeps thinking he's catching faces out of the corner of his eye. It feels like being a young child, in bed and convinced that the pile of laundry in the corner is the shape of a human. He's powerless to go and check.

The faces disappear when he tries to look. They only open their eyes to see him when his back is turned. Sometimes there is the sound of breathing just behind his head. And he'll think he'll see a flash of Yushi's hair or catch the scent of Sion's cologne, only for there to be an empty room.

They work in near-silence to set up the equipment. There is an uneasy quiet that comes with the knowledge of what they're about to do, and no one is in the mood for talking. There are no jokes or ways to lighten the mood.

By the time Riku does eventually dim some of the lights, the green net of the motion sensor lasers feels like a spider's web.

There's a stick of incense burning on the table they'd pushed against the wall. The air is thick with the scent of it. Daeyoung is sure he'd opened the windows, but that doesn't seem to have made a difference. His lungs fill with perfumed smoke anyway.

The EMF sensor doesn’t beep. The spirit box crackles with static, and nothing else. The LED lights shine bright and uninterrupted.

When Sion moves to change over the EMF sensor, they get their only sign of paranormal activity. The lights flash and the machine whines when Sion’s hand gets closer. When he pulls back, thin-lipped and tense, it stops.

The tension gets impossibly thicker.

Yushi keeps mumbling the words of the exorcism, unhelpful to tell them what it might mean. Sion leans forward and reaches again, and the lights flicker on with his increasing proximity. When Sion sits back silently and Daeyoung leans forward again, the same thing happens. 

Riku is the one to turn on the second sensor. It starts screaming the second it’s turned on in his hands, and dips into silence when he places it next to the first. The red lights look almost like warning sirens.

Sion leans forward a final time. Both sensors go off at the same time - different designs but matching lights and similar screams as Sion’s fingers stretch towards them. They’re only reacting to the presence of the members, then. 

Nothing else. 

He notices that Sion's nose is bleeding before he notices that his own is as well.

Riku, by his side, stiffens. It's hard to see in the dark and no one wants to make a sudden movement, but Daeyoung can see that Riku's nose is bleeding. There are twin trails making his way down to pool on his top lip, and his hands are shaking in his lap like he's trying to resist wiping it away.

Daeyoung can feel it on his own face. There's something sharp and stinging. It's like a high pitched noise digging nails into some part of his mind - something metallic without needing to taste it in his mouth.

Riku dips his head. The blood drips from his nose downwards that way. The spirit box in his hand doesn't make a single noise other than incoherent static. They'd read that it would pick up radio waves as well. That was what the ghost was supposed to use to communicate, through the safe distance of someone else's words.

They haven't heard a single thing resembling a human. The static peaks and falls and rises in buzzing. Riku stares at it, still bleeding, and Daeyoung has to tear his eyes away.

Sion had been the only one moving, in order to wave the EMF detector across the room. It hasn't made a single sound since he placed it in the centre of their circle. Daeyoung leans slightly forward just to make some sort of difference.

He doesn't need to get as close as before for the levels to spike.

Waving his hand in the direction of the reader sends the coloured lights in the corner flickering into orange. There's a shrill sound to join the piercing buzzing in his head, overlayed on top of the static from the spirit box and the click of Yushi's jaw as he keeps mouthing silently.

"It's stronger," he says. The blood on his face is hot. It gets in his mouth when he parts his lips to speak, and spills to his chin. There'll be a stain on this shirt. In the darkness, Sion has blood smeared across his cheek and the back of his hand. It's shining and wet, illuminated in slightly green from the lasers.

They weren't supposed to speak. Not until they came to some sort of conclusion, at least. But now they're bleeding and they hadn't discussed that - and that had been one of the signs Sion had shown when he'd interacted with the ghost before.

It's not showing up on the spirit box. The laser motion sensors haven't been triggered a single time. The EMF reader hasn't reacted to a single thing other than the members themselves, and Daeyoung doesn't want to think about what that implies - especially not whilst they're sitting in a circle like this.

The lights have pulled dimmer and dimmer, but it's the bleeding that is concerning him. He's getting a little light-headed. None of the others seem to be as worried. Riku hasn't moved a muscle and Sion keeps wiping it from his nose, despite it being a futile endeavour.

Yushi keeps silently chanting.

They don't react to what he's saying. It's not like they're frozen in place - Yushi's mouth is moving, Riku's hands shake and the back of Sion's hand is slick with blood - but it's like they're being played on loop. The static pervades into the air and makes the world around him feel stiff.

Something is wrong. The EMF had gotten stronger. There's no sign that the ghost is here with any of their other equipment, but Daeyoung isn't sure how much that matters. They're bleeding.

"It's too strong," he says, and it takes an immense strength to open his mouth. Every word he says has to convey meaning - it takes too much effort to choke out a single syllable. Yushi's hands still rest on the ground and his lips keep moving.

"Hyung-" He can't get Yushi to stop. He can't move properly and it feels like the world is slowing around him. He's not near enough to try and interrupt him. He isn't sure whether he's talking to Sion or Riku - or just to anyone who's listening.

They need to stop it. This isn't right. In fact, there is something very wrong.

"Sion hyung," Daeyoung tries to put as much emphasis into his voice as he can. The lightheadedness gets stronger and there's a pressure around his throat making it even harder to speak.

Sion's arm comes out. It flies at Yushi - blind and uncoordinated and not pulling his strength - and knocks him back. The force of it is enough to break Yushi's palms contact with the floor.

He lets out a stuttering gasp as he's knocked onto his back. The moment that his hands are no longer touching the ground, there's a distinct change in the atmosphere. His mouth stops moving, and Daeyoung realises that the gasp is the first proper sound he's made in a while.

The pressure is gone just as quickly as it had crept up on them. Riku shuts off the spirit box and the sound of static finally disappears, leaving Daeyoung with a strange ringing sound in his ears where it had been. The blood from his nose is finally beginning to stem.

"Yushi-" he chokes out, having to break into a cough when his throat spasms. The lights are brighter again. But there's blood on the floor - streaks on Sion's hand, on Riku's pants and down Daeyoung's shirt. "Are you okay?"

Sion has one hand pressed to his forehead, wincing in the same way Daeyoung is. The other one is helping Yushi sit back up again.

Something sticks in Daeyoung's throat when he sees him.

He hadn't realised how bad it was in the dark. He'd been looking at Yushi - he knows he had been, he can remember it - and he'd noticed that his nose was bleeding like the rest of them. He hadn't noticed the rest.

Now, with Yushi gasping for air and the lights in the room finally bright enough to see, there is clearly blood on his teeth. He tries to exhale and pink, frothy spit is pushed out from his lips. With his hair this short, the bright crimson trails leading from his ears are also painfully visible.

It's already crusting into rust-coloured flakes. The metallic taste in Daeyoung's mouth doesn't seem nearly as bad when he looks at Yushi like this.

"I don't understand," Riku says, the first one of them to find his voice properly - if you ignore Daeyoung's strangled attempt, dying at the first actual sight of Yushi. "It should have worked. This isn't like how it seemed online at all - nothing worked properly."

Yushi coughs again. Sion is kneeling beside him, patting his back, and once Riku finishes turning off the EMF sensor, he's quick to also take some of his weight. They're both supporting him. His skin has been completely drained of colour, and there's a heaviness to his lean that suggests he wouldn't be sitting up if not for the arms around him.

"It-" he tries to say, then screws up his face when it comes out wheezing.

"Hey, don't try to talk, you're bleeding," Riku says.

"We're all bleeding," Sion tells him straight back.

When Yushi starts speaking again, it's through sheer determination. Daeyoung wants to help but he also clings to every word - he nods when Yushi makes eye contact like he's the only one being spoken to.

"It wasn't right," Yushi says. "It needs to be the other dorm. We're too far."

Sion's eyes widen. "An anchor. We read about cursed items, but there's nothing there that fits, so it didn't seem applicable. But... that would make sense. Almost all of the haunting has been there. Actually - right up until we left, it really had almost all been there."

"There, or in our heads," Riku says. "Ryo mentioned the practice room once. We still don't know if that's connected."

Yushi tries to open his mouth but only ends up pushing out more blood. It's lighter now, which has to be a good sign. Daeyoung thinks that surely he'd be panicking more if he thought he were actively bleeding. Unlike what Sion seemed to have been suggesting, the blood from his nose and ears has completely stopped.

He doesn't look happy at being propped up. This isn't skin contact he's sought out, and if he had more energy he'd push them away or change the situation until he was the one in control.

"I'll get a glass of water," Daeyoung says.

It's a relief to come up with an idea. He hates just sitting and not helping. Sure, it takes a little more effort than it should to get to his feet, but he does it anyway. He will hold them together from the sidelines - anything he can do to relieve some of the crushing weight of pressure is something he will do.

When he gets to the sink, the faucet gurgles. The water that comes out is, for a second, not water. Daeyoung has been seeing the blood in the back of his mind every time he closes his eyes, and he does not even need that long to recognise what it is.

It only lasts for a second. A second is long enough for Daeyoung to stare in horror and for his entire body to flood with that same sickening terror. It is only a flicker of a moment, barely a full hallucination, and then the water is running clear and cold again.

It is the ghost sending a message.

Daeyoung swallows. He picks up a glass and fills it with water. By the time he makes it back to pass it to Yushi, his hands have only just stopped shaking.

Chapter Text

It's twenty minutes before Yushi starts talking properly again.

That doesn't mean it's twenty minutes before he could have said anything. It takes ten minutes for them to wet some tissue and wipe the blood from around his ears, but he's able to hold a glass and take small sips of water after only five. It's a little embarrassing to have his hands still shaking, but no one mentions it.

He spends the first ten minutes sitting in fog, like his brain has been put through a food processor. His ears are still ringing and his mouth tastes faintly like metal, even once he can hold the glass of water steadily. He has to concentrate to blink away the faint grey edge to his vision.

Riku sounds like he's talking from underwater. Yushi flinches away from the hands on his back, but then almost topples over again when they stop holding him up. His mind is so scrambled that he's not sure it would even hurt if he hit the ground.

Instead, his heart is beating like it's trying to compensate for every stolen sense. 

Yushi spends five minutes unable to move and ten minutes unable to think of anything other than the terrified rabbit-pace of his heart inside his chest. He spends the ten minutes after that chasing away the last of the fog and thinking.

It doesn't take twenty minutes for his mouth to be able to move. It just takes that long before he has anything to say.

Sion helps him up onto the couch they'd pushed against the wall, and Yushi draws his knees in on himself to think.

Daeyoung looks a little pale. They've all just been subjected to a pretty intense haunting - Yushi is more sensitive and therefore the worst affected out of all of them - but Daeyoung is noticeably too shaky. Yushi thinks he might have been targeted again, afterwards.

If that's true, the ghost is taunting them.

If it has enough energy to cause a hallucination so soon after Yushi's failed attempt at an exorcism, it's gathered power more quickly than he was expecting. It means their timeline, which has already been haphazard and rushed at best, isn't going to be enough.

After twenty minutes of Yushi thinking, that's what he says when he finally sits back up and unfurls himself. "We have to move tonight."

It's Riku who reacts first. "What?" 

There's still a small patch of dried blood on his face. Yushi would have thought he'd have cleaned it up after twenty minutes of sitting around, or that Sion at least would have pointed it out. He doesn't like the fact that neither of those things had happened.

Maybe he'd been more out of it than he'd thought. Or maybe everyone else has simply been worn down by the hallucinations and the stress. Once the ghost has hookholds into their subconscious, maybe it's easier to slowly drag them closer and closer to Yushi's level of perception.

"You still have blood," Yushi says, pointing to it. Riku's hand flies up and his fingers grace the spot. Sion hasn't looked away from either of them once. Daeyoung is finally starting to calm down now that Yushi is looking a little more alive, though. It can't have been a hallucination that had too much of an impact, then. "Daeyoung, did you see something?"

Daeyoung's eyes widen. "Eh?" But he looks back to the sink, which is pretty much confirmation. 

If the ghost is gathering power faster than Yushi has expected, the exorcism in the wrong place won't knock it down for long. Maybe it won't even have an effect at all.

"We have to move tonight," he says over Daeyoung starting to splutter out an explanation. It could be a little rude, but they have more important things to concentrate on now. There's no time for stories. Yushi doesn't need them; he's already put the pieces together. Riku and Sion will catch on.

He's-

He's worried that every second is going to count.

"It's stronger than I thought it would be," he says instead. He doesn't like the way those words taste on his tongue. "It's gathering power too quickly. I don't know how. Maybe it waited longer, and has been biding its time more than we thought. But if we don't move tonight-"

He doesn't want to finish that sentence. They have to know what he means.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he's been clear enough. Sion's expression has changed to something cold and hard, and it's only years of knowing each other that means Yushi doesn't wilt when the full force is directed towards him. "How bad?"

His tone is dangerous. Yushi swallows; his spit still tastes like metal. When he doesn't respond, Sion asks again.

"It'll end up killing one of us," he says. As soon as it leaves his mouth, he knows with a certainty that it is true. And he doesn't want to elaborate, but Sion's gaze is unrelenting and he knows he has to speak anyway. "It'll overpower one of us when we try to exorcise it. Depending on how that ends, it might use that surge of energy to injure someone else. Worst case, it attacks the person doing the exorcism."

Surely he does not need to explain that part. How bad that would be. The expressions on the faces staring back at him suggest that they know exactly what he means, and that they won't force him to say it out loud.

"You're not finished," Daeyoung says. Yushi is still aligning his next set of thoughts, but it counts as a reminder that they're running on borrowed time, so he speaks again anyway.

"We might be able to prepare more if we left it even an hour. But the ghost knows we're coming, so it'll take that time to prepare as well. It's using Sakuya and Ryo like batteries."

Sion's gaze is still hard, but this time he picks up what Yushi is saying. "It knows we're coming. They've been - fine, at least until now, because it's been draining their energy. But if it thinks it can successfully possess us as well, it won't need them anymore."

That's not just it. Riku has spent a long time watching Yushi's face. He hates the way his eyes crawl into his skin when he's being stared at, but he's grateful for the way that Riku notices when his lips twitch into a grimace.

"That's not just it," he realises. "Like batteries. If it needs as much power as possible, it might not even wait for us to arrive. It'll drain them before that. Yushi - what happens after that?"

"I don't know," Yushi says. Then, "They die."

Because he doesn't know. But he can make a very good guess. 

The expressions staring back at him visibly react to that information, though they surely should have realised that already. There's silence, and Yushi takes that opportunity to say his final piece.

"I can't be the one to do the exorcism. I'm too affected. It would be too easy to knock me down." And he doesn't want to think about what would happen after that, though it certainly wouldn't be his problem any more by that point. "It has to be Riku."

Riku's eyes widen. "Me?"

Yushi nods. "You've been the least affected so far. It would have been between you and Daeyoung, but it's been targeting him today. You currently have the most resistance. It'll give us the most amount of time."

"I don't know what to do!"

Yushi points to the book he'd been reading from, discarded on the floor. "It's only two lines to memorise."

"That's it?" Riku's voice raises higher. "How is that supposed to work? It didn't do anything here - what about two sentences is going to exorcise a ghost there?"

In all honesty, Yushi doesn't know. He presses his lips together in silence instead of saying that to Riku. Sion leans over to take the book. His hand rests on Riku's back when he passes it to him, and when Riku takes it, his fingers chase the contact for a moment too long. 

"We'll help in any way we can," Daeyoung says, flittering around the edges. He doesn't sound certain. All they're armed with is whatever they'd been able to research online. There's no validity to their sources, and they have no idea about what - if anything - could even have an effect.

At least this time they can leave the stupid ghost-sensing equipment behind.

Sion looks up to Yushi again. "How long do we have?"

It strikes a chord of annoyance. He might be more sensitive, but he doesn't really know more than any of the others. They have the exact same information that he does at this point. It shouldn't be on him to make the most important decisions. That's not a weight he wants on his shoulders.

"Every minute counts," is all he can offer. 

Outside, the sun has set. It had been afternoon when they'd started their initial circle, but now it has truly sunk into the evening. The world outside is dark and the shadows in the room are long. If the lights went out now, they would be unable to see a thing.

Sion nods. His own shoulders are set. "Fifteen minutes," he says. He says it like he's trying to convince himself. "If we go in too underprepared, it won't work either. We didn't prepare for anyone other than Yushi to be completing the exorcism, so that's how long we have to rework our strategy."

"It'll work," Daeyoung says. 

Riku is already reading the book, his lips mouthing the words silently. Yushi is suddenly even more glad that they'd gone for a ritual in Japanese. It is hard to translate under the pressure of a hallucination - and even worse with the full force of an angry spirit behind it. This way, Riku will at least have some of an advantage.

Daeyoung is also starting to gather materials. He's picked up the incense and a match box, tucking them into the pockets of his jeans. Sion is fetching the diagram of the protection circle they'd scoured the internet for - the only one that had caught Yushi's attention, and therefore the only one they'd considered likely to work.

There's a box of candles next to the couch. Yushi pushes them forward with his foot. Then he swallows the last of the traces of metal clinging to his teeth, and sets his mind to memorising the diagram as well.

Chapter Text

Fifteen minutes pass all too quickly, and Yushi is still holding the paper with the protection circle insignia on it when they gather outside of the other dorm.

Riku is still silently shaping the words of the ritual with his mouth. Daeyoung is gripping the incense stick with such force that it's already begun to splinter into his hand. His other hand is holding onto a glass jar of salt. In the darkness, the colour has been completely leached from his face.

Sion is the one standing closest to the door. He has a black marker pen in one hand - the same brand as the one Yushi's holding in his own. They'll be the ones to draw the protection circle, and Sion already has ink stains on his fingers from the practice. There's a small box of candles on the floor next to him that'll need to be taken inside.

They each have a paper talisman - an ofuda meant to protect - tucked beneath the layers of their clothes. They're so far from any Shinto temple that Yushi doesn't know if they'll hold any power. Even so, he is still careful to keep it safe, one hand absent-mindedly coming up to rest over where it's hidden behind his shirt.

"This is everything?" Sion says, one last time. They'd already done a double check before they'd left the first dorm. Anything that has been left behind now is not worth returning for. This is all they have - and it'll have to work.

But Sion is asking anyway. Yushi nods but he's not sure whether the question was solely directed to him or not. Riku stops mumbling and presses his lips together into a thin line. His head dips towards Sion in a silent agreement.

"This is everything." Daeyoung is the only one to reply out loud. "As long as we keep up what we practiced, it should be fine." He's doing a good job of pretending that his voice isn't shaking.

He's scared.

They're all scared. They don't all have to be sensitive to paranormal activity to pick up on the fact that the hallways - even outside the dorm - are too silent. They haven't seen a single other person. The staircase leading to different floors is empty and gaping like a mouth with pale teeth. There's a lift, but the glowing numbers on the screen haven't changed once.

The sky outside is dark. Night has fallen faster than it should have. The lights above their heads don't illuminate as much of the surroundings as they should, and the shadows that cling to the corners are dark.

Yushi can feel a presence, even standing a few feet away from the door.

The ghost is waiting for them, just as much as they're waiting to enter. The air is unnaturally still but Yushi's heart beats hard in his chest like it's trying to make up for the silence.

Putting logical reason to the fear does nothing to make it easier to face. The moment they step forward, the presence gets stronger. The temperature drops another few degrees. There are pinpricks of something frozen arching across the back of his neck. There's a horror turning itself over and over in the pit of his stomach.

They can't waste any longer.

He nods again, and this time Sion turns to the door. Without saying another word, he opens the door and the world tips slightly upside-down.

It's only the fact they've practiced their positions that means they don't even hesitate entering. The second that the door swings open, the lights in the hallway above their heads blink out with a crack. Yushi steps inside after Daeyoung and before Riku, and almost walks straight into his back.

The dorm is a mess.

The air is heavy and stale. It smells like something rotten. The lights are still on, but they're flickering and low, and the shadows on the walls seem to dance and reach towards them. There's such a strong smell coming from the kitchen that Yushi has to try not to gag - he ends up resting his hands on Daeyoung's back and pushing him forwards, and then all four of them are standing inside.

The table in the kitchen has been pushed over. The fridge is open along with every cupboard door. There is something rotting - every last piece of food that had been left behind. It hangs in the air and curdles.

He tries to pinch his nose, but his hands are full. The windows are smeared with dirt and ash and yet the endless black sky is still perfectly visible. There are no stars and there is no moon.

"Go," says Sion. They don't have time to take in the surroundings. They need to get moving.

There's blood on the floor. Not much - maybe just from Sion's nosebleed as he'd escaped. It's dried to a dark shade of rust and Yushi has to ignore how it surrounds him when he drops to his knees. He uncaps the pen, not bothering to note where it ends up.

They're mimicking the set-up from the other form. Daeyoung pushes the table back - it doesn't go far to the wall, so he bares his teeth with the force of it and lifts it to rest against one of the couches instead. There's something staining the cushions when he stands back.

Daeyoung isn't bleeding, but that's certainly blood. It drips from the seats and pools on the floor in a puddle that stretches towards Yushi and Sion. They're halfway through the circle already. Riku has set-up the candles and hurries to his position in the middle. Even a half-construct of protection is better than nothing.

"Faster," Sion is saying, "Riku, you need to start it now."

It's hard to breathe from the heaviness of the stale air. Yushi doesn't think they closed the door behind them, but it's definitely closed now. He focuses on sweeping the pen across the ground and doesn't flinch when the shallow puddle of blood starts to seep into his trousers.

He knows the pattern too well. He's memorised it. He doesn't need to see the ground to know where to draw - and the ink must reach the ground even through the blood. It coats his hands as he supports himself. It's warm and it makes his skin crawl. The stench of rot doesn't completely cover the smell of the blood he's kneeling in, and he thinks he can taste metal in his mouth already.

Shit.

It's faster than they expected. Yushi's moving across the circle quicker than Sion is, but that's because he's completely locked in. His head is starting to pound. Riku stumbles away from the blood but there's nowhere to go.

The entire construct is only a few two metres in diameter at most. The ring of candles are dripping wax, and Daeyoung's incense is heady and sweet and thick.

"Now!" Sion says.

Yushi can barely breathe. He knows the moment that the circle is complete, but not because there is some surge of power. The ground is only minutely more solid beneath his limbs, and realises he still doesn't have the strength to push himself to his feet. The power that has been stolen from them already is gone.

He just-

They'll just have to hope that it isn't enough. He knows the circle has been completed because there's a sickening thump and a crack, and Yushi can finally look up from the ground with a rush to his skull.

A bird has flown into the window.

The window, which is right there. And cleared out like this, the glass is perfectly clean again, meaning they can see the white of the bone jutting out from its wings from the crumpled position on the ground. The perfect snap of its neck.

There is something indescribably wrong about it. There is blood dripping down the walls to join the puddle on the floor - that Yushi is still collapsed in, because his mind screams at him to pull away but his body is too weak. Moving his head sends a wave of nausea and dizziness spiking through his bones.

Riku is speaking.

Yushi is not sure when Riku had started speaking. He's not sure whether he's lost time, because there are black spots dancing across his vision now. Sion's hands are like ice when he pulls Yushi to his feet and it's only then that Yushi realises his nose is bleeding.

All of their noses are bleeding. Sion hadn't been as affected as Yushi, considering he'd been able to help him up, but he doesn't let go even when Yushi is standing, and his grip is almost bordering on painful. There's an odd weight to the way he's leaning. His other arm is supporting Riku.

And-

Riku's eyes are open but sightless.

His pupils shake, so large and dark that his irises have been reduced to nothing more than a thin ring around the edges. The whites are stained with red - burst blood vessels, gathering by his tear ducts and weeping across the skin of his face.

Yushi can still taste metal. His jaw aches and his head spins but he looks up anyway and battles the overwhelming terror that threatens to send him spiralling right back down to the ground. If he's knocked over now, he won't be getting back up.

But he needs to force through it. The terror, the shrieking of his bones and his veins and every cell in his body, screaming at him to move and leave and get out. "Daeyoung-"

The incense is burning. But Daeyoung isn't here.

Another bird flies into the window. Yushi isn't looking, but he can somehow see the broken neck anyway.

Where has Daeyoung gone? The area they're in is small. It's typical of an idol dorm - a living room on one side and an adjoining kitchen on the other, and then a hallway leading to the bedrooms and bathroom. Yushi groans against the nausea but pushes past it. Except - scanning his surroundings doesn't seem to help at all.

Riku's mumbling fades into the distance. The blood pooling at his eyes is beginning to overflow. One tear is slowly making its way down his cheek. His hair is too long for Yushi to see whether his ears are bleeding as well. His teeth aren't stained with pink, at least. As long as he can keep talking, the exorcism can continue.

"I don't know," Sion says. He somehow sounds quiet. The lights are humming above them at a concerning volume. There's another thump at the window. The ghost should be here - in the blood and the birds and the shadows, but something is wrong.

It's been gathering power. It should have made a move by now.

Yushi is scared, but he isn't terrified. He'd expected it to be like staring into a void of nothing, coming to terms with a sensation he'd barely be able to describe other than pure terror. His heart is racing and his head is light and his nose is bleeding, but-

"Where did he go?" Yushi asks. "Sion hyung-"

He's supposed to be the leader. He's supporting Riku and Yushi, so Yushi pulls some of his weight away and tries not to sway where he stands. The buzzing gets louder. There's the dark leg of an insect beneath the couch, something moving beneath the blood under their feet.

It's only the fact he's stepped back - as far as he can in the small circle - that he's able to grab Sion's sleeve before the edge of his heel crosses the line.

In the hallway, Daeyoung has appeared.

"Hyung," he says, and his eyes are wide. His nose is bleeding and he's bent over slightly. There are bloody footprints tracked down the hallway, disappearing into the shadows. It's all happened so fast that Yushi hadn't noticed them before.

Or had they not been there before? Daeyoung's eyes are glassy. There's blood smeared on the back of his hand, but with the entire world screaming around him, Yushi-

He can't tell. He's not sure whether it's Daeyoung. Or just something shaped like Daeyoung, because he hadn't seen him leave and there's blood in his hair somehow.

Sion hasn't moved a muscle. Yushi's hands are still gripping the fabric of his sleeve. It'll be stretched so far that he won't be able to wear it again. Yushi can't think about that now - he just keeps pulling and staring at what could be Daeyoung, as it takes a step forward.

He doesn't move to pull him into the circle. "I don't know," he says, but it's almost drowned out by another bird and the humming of the lights getting louder again. And the fact that he's being stared at from all angles. There are eyes in the shadows and in the pools of blood, and in the reflection that's tearing its skin from its face at his feet.

Sion doesn't move. Riku's voice hitches. Yushi is frozen and for the first time since they entered, he feels it.

He doesn't react when the second of hesitation costs them. Sakuya stumbles from the shadows and lunges at Daeyoung - the only one of them not protected by the circle. Daeyoung's arm comes out and the incense topples over. The smoke trails into the air, sickeningly perfumed and cloying.

He should be able to fight Sakuya off. He should be able to push him back. Daeyoung is stronger than Sakuya. But Sakuya is possessed by something that's forcing him to ignore the screaming limits of his body. When Daeyoung tries to kick - squeezing his eyes closed - Sakuya ignores the pain that must spike from the connection.

And Daeyoung is too scared to hurt him. He pushes Sakuya back and tries to pin his arms behind him, but Sakuya has dark eyes and baby fat still clinging to his cheek. He has the face of a child and the worried pull to his lips. He might be crying.

Daeyoung can't hurt that. Even by the time Ryo appears, with nails and elbows and sinking his teeth so hard into Daeyoung's arm that it breaks flesh - and that Daeyoung chokes on a cry of pain that only breaks off because Sakuya slams his head into the ground - the fight is already over.

Yushi isn't even watching.

Riku is crying again. There are tears dripping down his face. Each one leaves a trail of crimson behind. His skin has been completely drained of colour now. His ears are bleeding enough that the fluffy ends of his hair are damp and matted. His chest wheezes.

Sion is bearing most of his weight. His eyes are fixed on Daeyoung in the hallway, frozen in place. One of his arms twitches like he wants to reach out, and there's an immense grief on his face, making his eyebags seem darker and his skin sallow. 

Yushi isn't watching that, either.

There is something behind them.

There is something that can only be described as a shape. It has no solid form and not even a visual presence that he can describe. It's dark under the flickering lights and it seems to absorb the shadows cast from the candles like it's bringing them into its body.

Just looking makes the room come to a screeching halt. This is the fear that he'd been expecting, and there is nothing in the world that could have prepared him.

He's faintly aware that he can hear something like nails on a chalkboard. There's an awful feeling of scratching on the inside of his skull, there are dark spots dancing across his vision. Everything else suddenly seems a hundred miles away. Yushi's heart turns to ice in his chest.

There's metal in his mouth again. It smells distantly like something is burning. 

He cannot move. He cannot breathe. His body is shaking and the coldness seems into his bones until all he can think about is how scared he is. The terror that this being leeches into the world around it. 

It does not have a face, but Yushi thinks it is smiling. It does not have a mouth, but he can see every single sharp tooth. There's something dark and red behind it. The flashes of white look like broken bones jutting from skin, or a ribcage curling around an organ. 

Oddly enough, beneath the crimson blood, it is yellow.

Everything else is spiraling. This is a dread that he can do nothing against. Yushi is simply the first to be targeted - like he'd guessed - and the full force of a horror that barely seems real. The ghost does not have arms, but it can reach forward anyway. It does not have fingers, but they stretch towards Yushi anyway.

The air is heavy with rot. The smell of decay from before has grown stronger until the perfumed incense has been completely masked. Then it gets darker. The lights flicker and the air gets heavy with an imaginary force - that's somehow pushing him towards the ground all the same. It is not just rot, Yushi thinks.

This is death.

This is something that has been dead for a while. This is something that has seeped beneath the cracks of their dorms and has been smart enough to bide its time until it could-

Consume. The flashes of white teeth are a smile at his agony. It feels the way his heart is about to burst through his chest and it wants more. It wants power. Ryo's misery, from the moment it started to sink its claws into his back. Yushi's slow, sickening realisation of what is truly happening.

The tears down Sakuya's cheeks. Teeth in Daeyoung's arm. The squeeze of Riku's chest as he watches, unable to do anything but move his mouth. Every single one of Sion's perceived failures playing out right in front of him. 

It doesn't want to go.

This is not something Yushi has been told, but standing there - under the gaze of something that died a long time ago, with nothing left of the person it might have once been - it is something he knows is true. 

There is no higher reason for this. There is no ulterior motive. There is nothing that has made them targets over anyone else in this city - other than the fact that they're tired and overworked and that they love each other. Which means it hurts more, now.

Anything that once was human has long since rotted. Perhaps it was never human in the first place. Yushi isn't sure. It has arms but it also has feathers. The decay has taken anything capable of rationality, but left behind the ability to plan and wait and pull on strings like puppets.

It has spent a long time waiting. It does not have eyes, but it is staring at Yushi.

There is no cruelty. There is nothing, human nor animal, left capable of that emotion. There is only cruelty - in the way that the grin grows widen when Yushi tries to swallow his nausea, or the way it keeps pulling blood down Riku's cheeks, the way it doesn't attack Sion so all he can do is watch. The way Ryo and Sakuya are still being controlled.

Their movements are slow. It is strong, but it has gained that strength from taking their energy, and the trade-off has been their lack of power now. With the ghost now also focusing on drawing Yushi away, Sakuya is only moving one half of his body, the other one twitching with his mind at war against the possession. Ryo is crying now, too.

Yushi is scared.

He is more terrified than he has ever been before. He cannot think of anything other than this all-encompassing fear.

The ghost reaches forward. Yushi doesn't want it to touch him, but he is rooted to the spot. The circle beneath his feet provides no protection - the ghost leans close enough that the stench of decay permeates through Yushi's lung and into his very bloodstream - and it hadn't protected them at all.

It never had. It is one last game that is being played with them. 

Yushi squeezes his eyes closed. Sion is finally saying something, but the words are muffled and indistinguishable from the screeching and the screaming and the continuous thunk-thunk-thunk of birds against glass. 

Riku is louder as well. His chanting is audible, but it's like a tiny candle in a rainstorm. 

But if there is one thing that Yushi is, it is stubborn. There is a reason why he couldn't be the one to perform the exorcism. It is why his ears and his nose and his eyes and his mouth are all bleeding now, as the ghost leans forward and their heads touch - and its head passes forwards into Yushi's very skull.

He is too stubborn to give up now, even when the horror is like nothing he's ever felt before. 

With the warmth of the ofuda burning up painfully against his skin, there is a shocking moment of clarity. It is just enough for Yushi to, for once, stop pretending that he hasn't noticed the way the world has become cruel and unnatural around him. 

Someone else wouldn't know what to look for.

Yushi always has. This is no different. 

-----

There is something rotting in the walls. 

Chapter Text

Yushi is dreaming about a bird.

He was not dreaming before this. He isn't sure where he was, or even what he was doing. He thinks it might have been important. It might still be important, if he's being honest, but he isn't there anymore.

Right now, he is dreaming about a bird.

In the dream, there is an endless blue sky in front of him. There are no clouds, nothing but the world stretching out. He can see the distant ground beneath him, but there's no shock at what should be a dizzying drop. He isn't falling. He's flying with the bird through the blue sky, and the feathers on his wings give him the freedom to go anywhere he wants.

There is no such thing as a fear of heights. Yushi thinks he should be scared - but that's only odd in his recognition of that fact. He isn't scared at all. 

He isn't just dreaming about a bird. He is the bird.

He is aware of yellow wings stretching out at his sides, the tilt of his head when he processes the tugging of the wind at his feathers. There are muscles and bones he hadn't had before, but they're Yushi's now. Flying is the easiest thing in the world. 

It's-

It's not right. He is both the bird in the dream, and yet there is part of his mind telling him that this isn't a dream. Or, rather, that he's not really a bird.

Of course he's not a bird, he's Yushi. He can be a bird as well. He has wings and he's flying over a world that looks so small from this height, but he's still seeing in human thoughts and human colours, even though in every other sense of a being, he is a bird. He is both at the same time. That shouldn't be possible. 

He wants to believe that it's true. It would be so easy to believe that it's true. Much easier than trying to come to terms with the two certainties in his mind - the fact that he is a bird, and that Yushi is not a bird. How can he be both? It doesn't have to be correct, it should just be - but whenever he tries to accept that, part of his mind starts screaming.

He thinks there might be blood on his teeth. Birds don't have teeth. 

Yushi doesn't have feathers.

He wonders whether this is something to do with... whatever he was doing. There is something he is supposed to be looking for. Wondering about birds and humans is not looking for anything, and in a distant-dream logic this makes sense. 

The world below is beginning to change. He'd been flying over distant green fields at first, so high up into the sky that even the buildings had looked like tiny insects. At some point, he must have flown lower - and at some point, the green has bled into grey.

He's in a city now. 

It doesn't look like any city he's seen before, and it's only the strange human part of his mind that is even able to make the connection. The buildings don't look like buildings - there are simply odd shiny rectangles that jut into the sky and make his path more difficult. There are loud sounds. Little things moving across the ground - not just the shapes of animals, but odd metal creatures as well.

The sky is grey. There are clouds now, but he's flown down low enough that he's miles beneath them. His wings ache. He's been flying for a long time and he's growing tired.

Yushi comes to a stop at a tall building. This one is filled with things on the outside. They're encasing it in a strange pattern - little metal branches at perfect right angles, creating a thousand different places to roost. He lands at the top and he thinks he can see the whole grey world from here.

There are creatures up this high. They talk and move around and Yushi watches them with human colours but a bird-like understanding. They all have the same coloured head. There's a metal box that makes the ground near it vibrate in an odd rhythm. Another box whirs round and round with a strange mud inside.

A machine almost the same colour as his feathers stretches up into his sky. It is holding things in its strange grey teeth, like perfectly straight trees. Something pale and loud flutters in the wind.

Yushi doesn't like it. He doesn't want to rest here. He doesn't like the grey world or the loud creatures, and he misses when the sky was blue and endless around him. The clouds are only getting darker. 

He is flying again. There is a small patch of blue, amongst all the grey. There is a hint of the sky in the distance, and Yushi longs to be there so badly that he spreads his wings like there is nothing in the world that can stop him. He reaches up. The blue is so close that he can almost touch it.

He is almost there. That parting in the clouds in the distance. He is up and away from the building and the metal machines. He is only a second into spreading his wings, but the entire world is at his fingertips. At the very ends of his wings.

He doesn't recognise how it ends.

There is nothing there. Yushi is flying up and free, and then he has hit something. There is a barrier between him and the sky - except there is nothing, and he can still see nothing as he starts tumbling down. 

He cannot move his wings. They hurt, but his head is spinning too fast to concentrate on the pain. The world he'd been so close to flying away from blurs into one set of colours, and his stomach falls out from underneath him. He cannot fly. He is trying to fly but he cannot, he is only falling and spiraling and panicking.

What has happened? He's falling. He's never fallen like this before. The human part of his brain is scared. The bird is scared as well. This is not like flying - it is helplessness, fear and agony and confusion. 

He cannot move even when he hits the ground. His wings are broken. There is something wrong with his body - it does not move when he tries to tell it too, and the beautiful yellow of his wings is darkening in the spots of grey in his eyes.

He has fallen somewhere tight. There is no room to move. He thinks he might be safe, but it is still loud despite it being dark, and there is nowhere to hide from the oddly-coloured creatures. 

It gets darker. He doesn't know where he is. He doesn't know where he has fallen, and why he can no longer move.

He is scared. 

He wants to keep flying.

Where has the blue gone? There is only a thin strip of sky visible from his crumpled position. Yushi thinks that is important, but he's confused. Is this what he's looking for? Why can't he find it? Why has the blue disappeared, and why can he not reach up to it?

He doesn't understand. He'd thought he was already dreaming, but he is so tired now. He thinks that his mouth is still bleeding, and his nose and his ears as well, and maybe that is why his head is ringing. 

He-

No, that's not right. He isn't looking for the sky. He isn't a bird - he's dreaming about a bird. A bird in the sky - not in the sky anymore, he's somewhere else. He's trapped and hurt and he doesn't think he's going to be found. He doesn't know where he is, but Yushi knows exactly where he must be.

Birds don't have mouths to make human words. But his wings could be arms and his feathers could be fingers, and so he points with the last of his strength, staring right up to the blue and the hollow of the wall all the same. 

--- 

Sion doesn't notice when Yushi is attacked by the ghost, and it should eat him up inside.

Except, it doesn't.

The part of him that would be panicking has already been worn away. He'd only just turned away from watching Ryo and Sakuya attack Daeyoung - his little brothers, all three of them, covered in blood and tears and agony - to see his first 'baby' standing completely still.

There is simply no room left for surprises.

Yushi had warned him this might happen. It's why he couldn't be the one to complete the exorcism, and Sion feels a sick sense of satisfaction or relief that they'd realised that. He hates the way that Riku's eyes are bloodshot. How his voice is hoarse and broken and how his hands are shaking. 

But he'd never be able to forgive himself if it had been the other way around. Because that would mean they wouldn't be getting out of here with all six members intact, and he refuses to live in a world where that had happened.

There simply is no time to be more horrified.

He can still hear the thump of Daeyoung's head against the ground. He's supporting half of Riku's weight, just trying to keep him upright against what seems like it must be agony. He had failed Sakuya and Ryo long before today. He feels sick when he sees their faces, but it has become a familiar taste in his mouth.

He's reached his limit. Sion is the leader because he is willing to love them and bear their entire weight upon his back, but also because he is the one to take the full burden of their suffering. It should not be the other way around. And now that it is, there is simply nothing more that he is willing to lose - and that pain has started to turn to anger.

Grieving before it is over is useless. Sion has made too many mistakes already. His emotions will not be a noose around his head - he can curl up and think of the looks on their faces later, right now he has to pretend like it doesn't hurt at all.

"Yushi-" he says, urgently. 

Yushi has stopped completely still, and does not react at all. His breathing is shallow, and the rise and fall of his chest is the only way Sion can tell he's still alive at all. His eyes are open and glassy. He's bleeding just like he had been only an hour ago. 

There is something akin to terror on his face.

Sion can't describe it. He doesn't think he's ever been that scared. Yushi's eyes are fixed on something in the distance, and Sion knows it is the ghost without needing to see it himself. 

"Yushi, stay with me," Sion says. Riku's weight increases a little on his shoulder. His muscles are starting to ache from the strain, but he barely recognises it. "Yushi, what is it? Come on. Don't let it get you."

There had been no warning. Nothing except Yushi staring like he was steeling himself, and then an instantaneous switch between terrified to completely still. For a second, it seemed like he'd been about to say something. Or maybe he'd tried to communicate - only for the ghost to reach him sooner than he'd thought.

Daeyoung is still lying crumpled on the ground. Sakuya and Ryo have stopped attacking him, at least, but now they're just sitting like dolls, or puppets waiting for their strings to be pulled again. There seems to have been a diversion of power. 

The ghost's focus is on Yushi. 

Maybe Sion could step outside of the circle and try to drag Daeyoung back? He's not sure whether the pen on the ground had ever protected them, or whether Yushi had leant just a few centimetres too far back. 

But he's supporting Riku's weight. He knows that the moment he leaves - either he'll have to pull Riku along with him, or he'll have to leave him to collapse. If he pulls Daeyoung closer - what even happens then? What if he didn't wake up even when Sion shook him by the shoulders? 

He'd have traded Riku's stability for a gamble that hadn't paid off. The longer that he can keep Riku upright and chanting, the more powerful their exorcism must grow. Even if it doesn't seem to have paid off yet, Sion isn't giving up hope. It's the last thing they have to cling on to. 

When Yushi finally moves, it's like he's fighting against something invisible. It takes immense strength for him to raise his arm. He's pushing against a force that Sion can't see - and Sion's chest aches with the want to support him as well, as impossible as that might be.

Yushi’s wrist twists, Sion finally thinks he might understand what's happening. The splay of his fingers is painful but it looks like Yushi is caught fighting against the ghost. They hadn't discussed what to do if one of them was being possessed, they'd assumed it was something that would happen quickly.

But maybe because it's Yushi, it's different.

Riku's eyes are bloodshot and distant, but he's watching just the same as Sion. His weight is heavy and he'd already been clinging to Sion's shoulders, but his fingers dig deeper at the same time that Sion stiffens. 

Yushi's jerky movements aren't just a fight. There's a reason he's lifting that arm and that hand. He's pointing.

He's pointing at Riku and Sion. No, he's pointing beyond them. Sion turns his head only to see that Yushi's pointing at the wall. It's the back of the living room, where they'd pushed the couch all that time ago. 

The table has fallen and sits half on the ground. The incense has long been knocked over, and there's a stain of soot where it lies. There's nothing except a blank wall staring back at him. 

"The wall?" Sion says. "There's nothing there. What are you pointing at?"

Yushi has completely frozen again. His mouth is slightly open and his breathing is impossibly shallow. With every rapid-pace press of his chest, there's blood that trickles from his mouth and out down his chin. He'll choke on it, soon. If he doesn't collapse before that. 

Is this where the ghost is? Sion doesn't understand. He wants to help, but he can't leave the protective circle and he can't let go of Riku. Yushi isn't giving him enough.

"There's nothing there." 

Yushi's jaw clicks. "Be-"

Then he freezes in place. There's no warning before he crumples to the ground. There's no sign that he was about to fall until his head is already connecting with the floor, and Sion would be nowhere near fast enough to try and catch him. 

He's supporting all of Riku's weight at this point. His back aches. Riku's breath is warm against his ear but he's bleeding and that's just as warm where it trickles down to Sion's shirt. The words he's mumbling barely sound like words anymore. He won't-

He's not going to be able to keep going much longer either. With Yushi on the ground, and Daeyoung knocked out, and Sakuya and Ryo picking themselves back up with soft cries, it should be over.

Sion refuses to give in. He's not going to let his members down again.

Be? 

Sion looks back at the wall. He's known Yushi for longer than any of the others. He still sees that child when he looks at him sometimes. He's gotten good at knowing when any of them need support, and Yushi isn't different. What could he have meant?

It clicks into place. Sion knows how Yushi's mind works. The direction he'd been pointing - back to when he'd been frowning before, lost in thought, every theory he'd shared that Sion had kept close to his heart and memorised because he wasn't about to make another mistake like he'd done with Ryo - and what he'd said.

Not 'be'. The start of, "between," he says out loud.

Between the wall? It looks completely blank and unassuming like this. It doesn't even back onto anything interesting - there's only the bathroom on the other side. Even if Sion were to leave the circle, he'd never make it there - not past Daeyoung on the floor, and through Sakuya and Ryo.

That can't have been what Yushi meant. That would have meant there was no point.

Between, as in... between the actual wall. He's never considered the thought that they might be hollow before, but the thought settles as a cold sense of realisation. There's something between the walls. Within the wall itself. 

"Riku," Sion says. They're still running out of time. There are birds against the windows and Sion's feet are soaked in a pool of blood. It doesn't matter if he knows it isn't real. It feels real, and he's being forced to watch his members (his brothers, his best friends and Riku amongst everything else) suffer. It doesn't matter if the blood isn't real. The pain is. 

Riku is still chanting. He's hardly supporting any of his own weight. Sion's had to adjust to hold him up, looping his arm beneath Riku's shoulders. Riku's knees shake on the ground. He has one hand flat against Sion's chest. He must be able to feel his frantic heartbeat.

"It's in the wall," Sion says, because it sounds more real once it's said aloud. 

Riku presses his hand harder.

Oh.

This is all Sion can do. He's the only one left on their feet. Riku won't be able to hold the exorcism much longer - not even just because of his drained body, but because his head is starting to loll when he tries to look up. 

He's lost too much blood. His skin is pale and sickly and his cheeks are flushed. His eyes are almost completely red and there's pink on his teeth, and his hair leaves red stains on Sion's shoulders from the blood leaking from his ears.

They don't have any time left. Sion isn't sure whether that realisation is what's starting to terrify him. Or whether the ghost, with no one else left to torture, is finally turning its gaze to him.

"It's not doing anything," Sion says. "Riku, stop. Riku, I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

He does. He just doesn't want to do it. He wants to have the weight of Riku's body in his arms for just a moment longer. He wants to erase everything haunting his mind up to when he'd thought they'd been sitting on the bed together, and he wants to pretend like he'd never been tricked in the first place.

He knows what he has to do. It'll hurt, but Sion has to do it.

Riku must know that as well. His head sweeps and one of his legs gives out. But he uses the motion to turn it into a nod. He understands. 

"I'm sorry," Sion says. He presses a kiss to the edge of Riku's lips. It tastes like blood and it's warm, but it's nothing like when the ghost had kissed him. It's all Riku even though it's chaste and soft and he's kissing the side of his cheek more than anything else, because he can't risk swallowing the sound of the chanting. 

He can feel the movement of Riku's lips against his own cheek for a second. It's less than a second, something so brief it might have even been his imagination. It'll have to do.

Sion lets Riku go.

He doesn't stay to watch him hit the ground. The moment that his weight is gone from his shoulders, Sion is turning around. The couch is close and he's crossed the living room from the circle before his body can even process what he's doing.

It's so cold. He misses Riku's weight. The wall is solid when he presses his palms up against it. Cold except for the streaks of blood, and when he leans back, the shape of his own palmprints stares back at him in bright crimson. 

Between the wall.

Sion starts punching.

It's like there's a buzzing in the room. He's not sure whether it's the pain of his fist. His thumb aches and the force jolts his arm up to his shoulder, jamming it back. There's the sound of static in the air. Something is shouting. His stomach is doing flips and his nose is bleeding.

The first punch does nothing except make a shallow dent. Sion doesn't even drop his hand. He keeps punching and punching.

"Stop it!" 

It's Ryo's voice. He's up off the ground. Sion won't tear his eyes away from his desperate fight against the wall. He won't risk it for a second - his knuckles ache with scrapes and his shoulder screams at him. 

There's a small hole. The wall is indeed hollow and Sion almost throws up with relief when he makes the first gap into the darkness. He doesn't stop for a moment. He keeps punching, and then his frantic left arm comes up to try and tug away the cracking plaster. 

His fingers are bleeding. His head is spinning. It is only adrenaline and fear and desperation that keeps him going.

There are small fingers wrapped around his arm. It's Ryo's hand, and Sion can see his face out of the corner of his eye. He flinches every time that Sion's fist connects with the wall and there's dust coating his cheeks, making every tear track stand out. He's climbed up onto the couch beside him. He's scared.

"Hyung, stop it!" Ryo begs. He sounds exhausted. There's pain laced in every syllable that he speaks, sending daggers straight to Sion's heart. "It hurts me- stop it, please."

His fingers are cold. His skin is blotchy and the shadows beneath his eyes have grown even darker. Sion refuses to look, but - that's his baby, and he can't help the way that he glances like he's pretending not to.

Ryo looks so small. He looks so small and young, like he's still the fresh-faced fifteen year old that Sion had met all those years ago. He's lost weight in his cheeks. His face has always been soft, but now everything cute has been pulled away and replaced with a desperate panic. 

There are tears rolling down his cheeks. His throat bobs as he swallows down a sob. His voice breaks as he begs Sion to stop. It's impossible to tell whether he's being controlled, or whether the words spilling from his mouth are his own.

Whether the real Ryo is being forced to watch something puppet him, watching behind windows as he's made to torture Sion, and unable to do anything to stop it. Or whether that is what he really feels, under the exhaustion. 

Sakuya has curled up in pain on the ground. Sion doesn't want to look, but he can't stop himself. He doesn't stop frantically pulling pieces of plaster away from the wall, but he can't pretend like the other members don't exist. He has to see-

Sakuya is on the ground, chest rising and falling quickly. It's exactly the same pace as Yushi, slumped across the protection circle. Daeyoung is finally awake and trying to push himself up, but Sakuya's nails have dug into his ankle and it's taking Daeyoung an immense amount of strength to even lift his neck.

He's breathing quickly as well. There's static in the air and it's beginning to drown out the noise of Riku mumbling to words of the exorcism. The blood on the ground is gone but now the ceiling is bleeding instead. There's someone screaming. 

It takes him a moment to realise that it's him.

His own throat is raw. He's yelling like if he screams loud enough, he doesn't have to hear the cracking of the lights in the ceiling, or the frantic gasping breaths of the members of the floor, or the buzz of static in the air. 

He's trying his best to drown out the sound of Ryo begging. 

"Stop it," Ryo asks. "Stop it, please, hyung, please- please, please- It hurts, don't do this - Hyung, you're hurting me, it hurts -"

Sion doesn't stop. He's not sure what he's yelling back. Anything to try not to listen. His hands are covered in his own blood. They're hot and slick from the blood on the walls, but now they're also covered in scrapes and cuts from pulling away the wall. He doesn't stop because he can't stop. They sting and his shoulder aches and Ryo's hands are so cold where he grips Sion's arm, but Sion has always been stronger. 

He punches the wall. The plaster comes away. 

"It hurts," Ryo chokes, and Sion believes him. With every punch, Ryo whimpers like he's being torn into pieces, whines like he just wants it all to end - and sobs because it's Sion who refuses to end it. There's an agony to his voice that would be impossible to fake. 

"It hurts, hyung, stop it, please-"

Sion doesn't listen. The hole is large enough. There's nothing there but darkness - it can't be more than a few inches wide before it hits the plaster on the other side, but Sion isn't thinking about any of that. 

He wants it to stop, too. He wants them all to be okay. He doesn't want to hurt them any more.

The gap isn't big and Sion doesn't know what he's supposed to do, but it's wide enough to fit his hand and so that's how he moves on instinct. He leans forward and pushes his bleeding knuckles into the wall. Ryo screams in pain and Sion uses the sound to ignore the agony in his shoulder. 

He doesn't know what he's doing. There's something. Those facts are both true at the same time and Ryo's scream bites off into sobbing, but his fingers are still tight on Sion's other arm. All the pain does is make him want to end it even more. It brings him back down.

He leans further forward. His shoulder presses against the wall and his fingers - finally, scrape against something.

There's something at the bottom of the wall. Pressed inside the hollow and he thinks it might be rotten with the way it slightly gives way beneath his fingers, but he isn't thinking about any of that. 

He grabs it. He ignores his hand scraping against the walls as he brings it back up. He doesn't think about the slight crunch of whatever is cradelled in his palm. He's existing solely on adrenaline and agony, and he thinks he might have hurt something deep in his shoulder by the time he brings his hand back up, but the ache is only hollow.

His hand comes free from the wall. 

The candles go out.

The blood on the wall disappears - in most places, there are still handprints and scrapes that match the cuts on Sion's hands. There is blood on the ground, but only from their bleeding noses. The scrawl of the protective circle is stark against the floor. The pen lines seem pathetically thin now that-

The lights are back on. Sion's body reacts a second too late. He hadn't realised how much of the room had been suffocated in shadows until they're suddenly all gone and he's blinking away spots from the sudden light. 

He hadn't realised how much of a pressure had been on his chest until it feels like he can finally breathe again.

It's over. Riku is coughing and spluttering but he's breathing, and Yushi is heaving up pink-tinged bile in the same way. Daeyoung is clutching his head but he's finally picking himself up from the floor. Sakuya's cheeks are still pink, but he's rolled over with a heaving chest and staring up at the ceiling. 

Ryo's hands slip away from Sion's arm. Sion finally uncurls his hand.

In the centre of his palm is the body of a bird. 

Chapter Text

They wait until the sun has come up in the morning before they start moving.

Ryo sits by the window and watches the sky change colours. It would be fitting for the heavy clouds of the past few weeks to have finally parted. Instead, there's a fine mist of drizzle raining across the city, and the rising sun is only just visible through patches of wispy cloud.

The world turns red and orange, then pink and purple, and then finally a weak blue behind the huge swathes of grey.

He's fallen asleep on the couch for most of the night. Sion hadn't let any of them out of his sight, even though the bird had been safely placed in a box and set on the table. There was no danger any more. The couch that all six of them had curled up onto was still covered in dust and chunks of plaster.

But Sion didn't seem to have gotten that message, with the way he wrapped his arms around Ryo and Sakuya and tried to pull Yushi just as close. He spent the darkest hours of the night resting his head on Riku's shoulder and pressing his leg up against Daeyoung's shins.

They'd tried to bandage their wounds. Ryo's not sure who'd taken care of what, though he knows it must have happened.

He'd been too out of it.

The possession getting lifted had been like nothing he'd ever felt before. The immense crushing devastation that the ghost had on his body had left him hollow when it had finally been released. Hollow and with an aching throat, and a heart that had been crumpled up so tightly that he wasn't sure how long it would take to heal.

He'd hurt Sakuya. Like sleepwalking, or like watching through his own eyes had the same amount of distance as a television screen, his limbs had been puppeted. He'd played the perfect part of encouraging Sakuya into the bathroom, and then he'd choked him.

It feels distant when he thinks about it now. The memory of every action he'd made is blurry, hidden under layers and layers of filter paper. If it weren't for the pain and the guilt, it might have been easier to pretend to move on from.

But as it is, Ryo just remembers the feeling of being helpless, and dragging his friends down to meet the exact same fate.

Riku keeps petting his hair, and the motion is what wakes him up properly. "You're safe now," Riku whispers, and his voice sounds ragged when he speaks, even though it's so quiet it's barely audible.

Ryo has to check beside him to make sure that Sakuya is still breathing. He allows himself to lean into Riku's soft touch, but counts the seconds until he pulls away. Then he disentangles himself from Sion's grip and pushes forward until he can stare at the body of the bird.

He's not sure he is safe now. It certainly doesn't feel that way.

He can still remember what it had felt like to fall.

In the end, he hadn't been able to sleep any longer. He'd been so tired from the constant dreams that, for a while, he'd have done anything to sleep like he could now. But even with the ghost gone, Ryo finds that he still ends up jolting himself awake. He hasn't been dreaming at all, but his chest wakes up taut with terror all the same.

Instead, he pulls himself away and sits by the window, watching the sun rise. He doesn't mention the way that Yushi glances at him from underneath his eyelashes, pretending to sleep as well.

It's a little odd to sit in such quiet when everyone is so nearby.

Ryo's not sure how he feels about it.

It still feels oddly numb, even as the rest of the members begin to wake up. There's part of him that can't believe it's finally over. There's part of him that jerks awake whenever his eyes begin to flutter closed. There's part of him that has been worn away with guilt and horror and desperation, and now there's only an empty space where the person he once was had been.

Daeyoung's arm is bandaged. He'd been the first one other than Yushi and Ryo to wake up, and he'd moved to the kitchen to start sorting out the rotted food. He opens the fridge and his lips press together when he starts moving the contents into a black bin bag. None of it is salvagable. The smell should make his stomach roll, but the windows are open and they must have slowly become used to what was left. 

Ryo thinks he should be hungry. He can't remember eating when he'd been possessed, but then again, he can't remember most of that time. There are long stretches that are completely missing, mostly from when it had just been him. The ghost had more power to suppress his mind then. It only let him see through his own eyes when it knew it could make him hurt.

Like with Sakuya, in the bathroom. Like when he'd sunk his teeth into Daeyoung's arm during the exorcism, and the fact that the breaking of the skin had felt jubilant. His blood had tasted good, no matter how much Ryo's mind had screamed. 

With Daeyoung moving, it isn't long before all six of them are awake. Sakuya moves to the bathroom to splash his face with water, only to back out with dry skin and slightly shaking hands. The door hadn't opened more than a few inches before he'd backed away.

"Ryo," Riku says. "In the corridor. I'm sorry, I should have noticed that something was wrong. I should have been there for you."

"That wouldn't have worked," Ryo tells him in response. His MBTI has always been T, after all, even if he isn't sure he believes in that. It's just... realistic. "The ghost had it planned out. It was drawing me away. I wouldn't have gone to you, even if you asked. I was too tired."

It doesn't make Riku feel better, judging by the way he doesn't react. It's like he hasn't heard what Ryo has even said. 

"There was nothing you could have done," Ryo says, and he feels like a child masquerading in an adult's body. As adult as he could be at 18, anyway. "You did the exorcism. That's enough."

His hand goes to his own throat without thinking, and Riku mimics the action. His voice is still raw and rough. Ryo is surprised he's able to speak at all without wincing. His eyes are still bloodshot, and once the morning light begins to spill in, Ryo thinks they'll look even worse.

It doesn't matter. They're both still here. Riku leans forward to pull Ryo close to his body, and Ryo doesn't pull away. He lets himself lean against Riku for longer than he normally would. He lets Riku push his bangs away from his face and call him cute. Even though it's a pale imitation of who they normally are, it's so normal that he finds himself clinging to it. 

There's so much they need to talk about eventually.

But now isn't the right time. They're all exhausted. They're all hurt and it's all too raw. For now, they'll sit in silence and stay thankful that they're all alive. They'll cling to each other a little tighter.

They can apologise tomorrow.

(For what, Ryo thinks. Riku smiles, but he can still see the way that Sion looks at him out of the corner of his eyes. He wants to apologise for the fact that the ghost used his image to hurt Ryo, and for the fact that he didn't notice something was wrong sooner.

It wasn't his fault. If it's his fault, then it's Ryo's fault for leading Sakuya into that bathroom and dooming him to suffocating in the grip of a puppet-master. It's Ryo's fault for not coming to him. It's Yushi's fault for not speaking up sooner, and it's Sakuya's fault for leaving Ryo alone in that room.

How can it be any of their fault? There's the body of a bird in front of them.)

"Let's go," Sion says, because he's the leader, and in times like this they all fall into line behind him.

The sun is still only just peeking over the horizon. The sky is coloured in greens and the very palest blues, and there are two bin bags in the kitchen filled with the contents of their cupboards. 

Daeyoung tries to pick up the box with the bird in it. Ryo doesn't need to say anything, but he steps forwards and holds his hands out expectantly, and Daeyoung passes it over to him without protesting. They find the matching cardboard lid and then they pull on their coats and shoes and masks.

The long sleeves cover up most of the wounds. Daeyoung is limping slightly. Sion holds one shoulder with more care than usual. The bathroom fight doesn't have any remaining signs on Ryo and Sakuya, but Riku has to be careful not to say much and Yushi has a purpling bruise on the side of his face.

"Where to?" The taxi driver asks them. They won't look like popular idols, beaten up like this, but they'd walked for five minutes down the road anyway. It's too early for the staff to be up and monitoring their dorms, but that's also a risk that they just can't take.

"Out of the city," Sion says. 

"Just... out? Nowhere in particular?"

Sion nods. "Just keep driving in one direction until you reach the countryside."

The taxi driver looks at them. He's an older man. It's trendy with younger people to wear masks, and there are thousands of idols in this city. Their coloured hair won't be warning signs. Their request is just... strange. He looks at the cardboard box Ryo is carrying. "Oh? You boys going on a trip? If you want to see some greenery, there are plenty of parks. Just let me-"

"No." Sion shakes his head. He knocks his arm against Sakuya, sitting next to him, by accident. It doesn't show on his face. "It has to be the countryside."

It's not going to be over, if it's the city. It isn't right. The field they end up in won't be the same one from Ryo's dreams, but he thinks that as long as it's out of the city, it'll be fine. There'll be a blue sky above. If not today, then one day.

Yushi must agree. "Go left," he says. 

The man glances at Sion. Sion just sits back in his seat wordlessly, and the taxi eventually starts. The radio is quiet where it pumps music into the car, and the streets are busy despite it being so early in the morning, but there's something oddly quiet despite that. 

They drive in silence. Ryo rests his head against Sakuya's shoulder without thinking, and then curses his heart for starting to speed up only after he'd realised what he'd done. He doesn't want to start expecting Sakuya to pull away. He still remembers holding him down and the way that his best friend had tried to fight back. 

But Sakuya doesn't flinch. He plays a game on his phone as Ryo closes his eyes. The hum of the engine is soft. Sion keeps patting his head like he needs to check that he's still there every five minutes. 

They arrive.

"Here?" Daeyoung says, leaning to check the expressions on the others' faces. The taxi driver begins to slow down and pull into a small side road. 

It's not near a field. Ryo thinks there won't be a field nearby like the one in his dreams - or the one that the bird had seen from so high into the sky. They've already been driving for an hour.

There's no lush greenery like he would have hoped. This close to Seoul and this late into the season, the ground is covered with fallen leaves. Those still clinging to the branches are yellow and orange, and the wild area in front of them is covered with small bushes rather than lush grass. 

It's close enough. There's a bird singing somewhere in the distance. The clouds are finally starting to disappear and the sky is blue behind them. They're far enough out of the city that Ryo thinks he's satisfied - there are no tall buildings in the distance, only a world just slightly closer to nature.

Yushi nods. It's answering for both of them. 

"Can you wait?" Sion asks. It's polite but strained. "We'll only be fifteen minutes, then we'd like to return to the city." Daeyoung nods, eyes wide and fluttering and equally polite. They know the exact words to persuade the taxi driver whilst the other members sit quiet and bow when they're needed to.

It works. There's not going to be much other trade here. Not in such an odd place, and not this early in the morning. They'll pay for the time he spends waiting. 

It does mean they'll need to be out of his sight as well.

This time, Yushi leads the way. He's more injured than he'd like to let on, so Daeyoung trails behind him with a watchful eye. Ryo swallows his guilt at the whole situation and thinks about trying to badger Sakuya, only for it to feel hollow. The cardboard box is still too heavy in his hands. He can't pretend it's all normal when it isn't, yet. He doesn't want the body inside to infect them more than it already has.

Sion whispers something to Riku. Riku nods silently back.

They walk until Yushi stops. It's at the bottom of a small slope and it's completely quiet. There are no houses or buildings in the distance. They're surrounded by trees on all sides. It feels like a place like this can't be only five minutes away from where the taxi had pulled up. 

Sakuya takes off his bag. Ryo grips the cardboard box a little tighter. He watches as Sakuya and Riku, the least physically injured, dig a hole. 

No one speaks. 

Daeyoung takes over from Sakuya. Sion tries to take over from Riku, but doesn't last longer than a few moments before Yushi stops him.

Ryo just holds onto the box. When the hole is deep enough, they all stand back except for him. Ryo takes a step forward and sets it into the hole. It's so shallow that the very edge is only a centimetre or two below the ground. After a moment of hesitation, he takes the lid off and discards it to the side.

It's odd to see the bird. Something so small and fragile, and then to think of all the pain it had caused.

But there's something strange and desperate inside of him that says the bird needs to see the sky. It's something lingering and foreign, and yet so intertwined with Ryo all the same that he's not sure whether it actually is his desire or the bird's. It's part of him.

So he takes away the lid and he looks at the body of the bird. 

And staring at it like this... it's like something snaps. There's a subtle change in the air. Ryo feels like an invisible weight has been lifted from his shoulders, or a pressure finally released from his chest. It's like he can breathe properly for the first time in a while. 

"This is it," he says. As if everyone else couldn't also feel the way that the air had softened. The release of the silence and an allowance to finally speak. 

"It's over," Yushi agrees. He leans forward to stare at it. It's hard to tell what he's thinking from his expression, but he nods slightly when he eventually steps back. Riku's hand finds Sion's to hold. Sion turns to stare at him and Riku only holds it for a few moments before quickly glancing away - and it's so normal that Ryo finds the heavy weight lifts impossibly even more. 

"It's a canary," Daeyoung says suddenly. "Those feathers are yellow, and look at the size of the body. But they're not naturally found anywhere near here. I wonder if it was someone's pet."

"A canary?" Ryo echoes.

"It's a type of small bird. They're famous because they used to be used in the mines. If there was dangerous gas in the air, it would affect the canary first, and the miners would realise it wasn't safe."

They all look at the tiny body. Something about Daeyoung's explanation makes Ryo want to take a step backwards - inching to get slightly further away from the hole in the ground. He doesn't like looking at the bird. More specifically, he doesn't like the idea that he might start feeling pity for it.

After everything it put them through, he's not sure how he feels. An animal morphed into a monster doesn't have any sense of humanity to begin with.

"You mean like, if it died?" Sakuya asks.

Daeyoung tilts his head, which is a sign that he doesn't know but that he could also make a pretty good guess at the answer. One life of a bird for twenty men in the darkness. Ryo doesn't want to feel pity for that, either.

It's a bird.

He doesn't like the way that the talk of canaries makes him feel. He thinks he might have heard that story a long time ago, but he never would have remembered it if Daeyoung hadn't brought it up. Part of his mind remembers seeing the brilliant yellow of feathers on his wings and thinking it was a colour that could only exist inside his mind.

He wonders if he's the canary in this scenario.

It feels fitting. It feels like some of the feathers might have been left behind inside of him, after all.

Yushi steps forward again. He's holding another paper talisman. There's nothing that Ryo can see or feel left to the bird that could ever come back, but he doesn't want to question what Yushi might be thinking. 

The paper doesn't cover the bird's eyes in the end either, so it doesn't really matter.

"It's been twelve minutes," Riku says. His voice is still rough. He's right. Yushi stands back and Ryo stares at the bird for just a few moments longer.

He wants to leave it behind so badly. He wants to turn his back and never think about this again, but he thinks that it'll always be part of him. He thinks they'll all heal and they'll eventually move on, but for now he cannot stop looking at the body of the bird. 

"Come on, Ryo-chan," Sion says. He's fine. He's fine, Riku is fine, Daeyoung and Yushi and Sakuya are all fine. They're just as okay as Ryo - which is to say they're shaken, but they'll recover. The six of them are still together. Like that, they can get through anything.

Ryo looks at the bird one last time. "Goodbye," he says. There's no weight left on his chest to be lifted, but he still manages to smile when he turns around, and that has the same feeling as being able to breathe again all the same.

Sakuya is standing there. He's waiting for Ryo to join him back on the walk back to the taxi.

Ryo's smile widens to a grin.

"Lovely baby panda~" He says, just to see Sakuya pull a face - exaggerated after everything they've been through, but with real affection still visible in his eyes. 

Sion coos in front of them. Daeyoung is also grinning, and Riku looks like he'd want to take a photo if it weren't for everything else surrounding their location. He makes a pinching motion with his hands instead. 

"Do you think we can stop at a cafe on the way back?" Yushi asks from up ahead. His voice is quiet but so earnest that Ryo can't help but grinning even wider.

He takes Sakuya's hand. They run together to join the other members on the hike back up the slope.

The sky is blue and the world isn't quiet. They're starting to laugh and talk over the silence of it all. Ryo yawns and presses his head into Sakuya's neck again, and this time he doesn't flinch when he thinks about falling asleep. He chases the touch when Sakuya tries to swat him away.

Not every canary has to die. He's still here.

It's autumn, but the weather is warm. There is laughter in the background. He closes his eyes in the car seat and he dreams about nothing.