We Are Bulletproof

It was dark when Soo Hyun came to, with his head throbbing and his mouth so dry that his tongue felt like sandpaper. With a hoarse groan, he tried to get up. None of the lights were on in the house and with the fog outside blocking out even the street lights, all was in darkness. It was probably for the better anyway; light would have made his headache worse.

"Kihwa?" He dimly recalled what happened, with a faded, dull sense of alarm. It hadn't sunk in yet, just what happened earlier that afternoon. He nursed his head gingerly and felt the mass of clotted, hardened blood at the back of his skull. Soo Hyun groaned again as he sank back against the cupboards, briefly closing his eyes. Maybe if he had a few moments' rest, he could attempt to get up again.

Eventually he made it to his feet, swaying with dizziness and pain. Kihwa. That was his driving thought--to find Kihwa. To get him to the hospital and away from that creep Ryan. Soo Hyun didn't know what happened after he passed out but he hoped with a fervent desperation that Kihwa was all right. His heart thudded in his chest and he felt sick with dread. What if something happened? What did Ryan want with Kihwa? Was he out there in the fog, alone and lost?

Staggering into objects into his way, it was a while before he found a light switch and flicked it on. Nothing. Nobody home. Kihwa wasn't in the kitchen and he wasn't in the living room. When Soo Hyun called out his name, he was greeted with silence. "Kihwa!" He stood at the open door, shouting it into the fog, and the only sound that came back was the backfire of a car somewhere in the distance. Unsteadily, Soo Hyun stepped out. He pulled his jacket tighter around him as he stumbled down the front path.

Kihwa. Find Kihwa.

"...yes. He needs to go." There was a strange smile on Ryan's face. "I'll take him. You have a job to do, remember?" His voice was soft now, persuasive, reasonable. He stepped forward and laid a hand on Kihwa's wrist. "You have a job to do."

"No!" Soo Hyun didn't know what the hell Ryan was doing but his gut told him that it was bad. He glared at Ryan, at that seemingly innocent smile on his face and the cold glitter in his eyes. "Don't listen to him Kihwa!"

"You have a job to do." Ryan kept repeating it, in his quiet and soft voice.

"Remember? Your job. Go do your job. I'll take care of him."

"Good." Ryan nodded and turned to leave.

Soo Hyun remembered his name now. Ryan. It was Ryan. He and his family moved to Hazleton a little over a year ago to set up the Moonlight Inn, but Ryan didn't usually go into town. His siblings had jobs in town but Soo Hyun rarely saw Ryan himself, or his parents.

Why was Ryan here? Why was he telling Kihwa that he had work to do?

"Ki-hwa. No, don't--" Soo Hyun said weakly, in broken and breathless syllables, reaching out to grasp onto Kihwa's ankle. No. Something wasn't right. Kihwa shouldn't be going with Ryan, he should be calling 911 so that an ambulance could come take him to the hospital. All of those gashes on his body, and the strange and terrifying things he said before...

"If you know what's good for you," Ryan said mildly--though his expression turned a shade annoyed, "you'll let him go, Yin. This doesn't concern you."

"...no... Kihwa..." Soo Hyun's grasp on him tightened. "Hospital..."

"Ki-Kihwa..." Soo Hyun tried to rise but when he did, the entire world spun. He sat down quickly and leaned his back against the cabinets behind him, feeling warm, wet blood trickling down the back of his neck. If anybody needed a doctor, he might, but he was far more alarmed by what was happening to Kihwa.

"Don't listen to the voice," he said faintly, reaching out and curling his fingertips around Kihwa's forearm, safely covered by cloth. Even so his fingers tingled unpleasantly. "Get to the-the hospital. Please, the hospital. Not th--"

"That won't be necessary." The new voice startled Soo Hyun. He looked up to see the guy from the Moonlight Inn standing in the kitchen doorway, looking strangely calm. It was an almost out of place expression, for somebody who had stumbled across a scene like theirs. The guy--was his name Ryan or Bryan or something?--looked at Soo Hyun, then at Kihwa and it was the latter that he addressed.

"You have work to do."

"Agh!" Soo Hyun twisted away from Kihwa's touch. He didn't have to look in a mirror to know that the skin was bruising, turning marbled purple and black and blue. It hurt but not more than his hands and not more than his head, where he'd smacked it hard on the floor. Nobody had touched him since he discovered that human touch burned and bruised. He hadn't let anyone get near him--not even the celestial who turned him into this monstrosity.

But he couldn't send Kihwa away. Kihwa flew all the way from Korea to be with him and... Soo Hyun loved him. There was no way that he could slam the door in Kihwa's face; he was too selfish for that.

Now, though, it felt like his decision was coming back to bite him hard in the ass. He struggled to sit up, tried to pull his sleeves down and his coat collar up to hide the bruises. "Don't... don't worry." God, he felt like he'd been beaten up. Everything throbbed and ached and his vision was worryingly beginning to double every so often. Soo Hyun shook his head lightly as though that might help.

"You need to get to the hospital." Somebody there must be able to help Kihwa, like a psychiatrist.

Nausea came and went in brief waves as Soo Hyun struggled to hold on to Kihwa's ankle. He felt something thick and warm dribbling down the back of his head, too, and his hands were bruised and blistered as if he'd thrust them into an open fire, then smashed them with a brick. They felt like that too.

"Kihwa..."

What had gotten into him? Why was he suddenly acting completely... well, crazy? Soo Hyun didn't say as much over the phone, but hearing voices and wanting souls and all of that was definitely not a product of 'tiredness.' Was it... him? Was his being a yin somehow affecting poor Kihwa too? Soo Hyun already couldn't touch him, couldn't do anything but brush a sleeve over him. Now this?

He groaned as another wave of dizziness hit, and then fell back as Kihwa suddenly stopped. When Soo Hyun looked up at him, into his worried face, he seemed more like himself again. "Don't... don't listen to the voices."

It hurt. It burned and blistered his hands, where he touched Kihwa, but Soo Hyun couldn't just stand there all agog while Kihwa hurt himself! Wincing at the pain, he managed to fling the knife away but then--

"What? I'm--Oof!"

He was about to protest--to lie, a little--but then Kihwa slammed him to the ground and all the air was knocked out of him. Soo Hyun's head smacked into the tiled kitchen floor and he swore he saw stars.

Dazed, he laid there panting for a few seconds as he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening. This wasn't his Kihwa--this was someone else. This was... something else. A shadow passed over him; Kihwa was stepping over him to get the knife. Weakly, he reached out and grasped onto Kihwa's pant leg with bloodied fingers. "St-stop," Soo Hyun coughed. "Ki... Stop."

The stupid fog made driving almost impossible, and even then Soo Hyun all but killed himself trying to get home to Kihwa. Something about the way he laughed at the end unsettled him. It was... Frankly, it was creepy as fuck and Soo Hyun felt the goosebumps rising all up and down his arms the second he heard it. Good thing he was only fifteen minutes away, though. Good thing there weren't cops on patrol to catch him going way over the speed limit, as he drove like a demon through the streets.

He knew something wasn't right that morning just from the way Kihwa looked--pale and a bit drawn, with a strange brightness in his eyes. Soo Hyun thought it was fever, so he found the flu meds and put them on the kitchen counter for Kihwa to take if he continued to feel worse. Since he couldn't touch his own lover--something he had yet to address with Kihwa, in his cowardice--he sort of ghosted a gloved hand over Kihwa's arm and then hastily ran out the door.

And now he was running back through the door, calling out Kihwa's name. Soo Hyun dropped his phone onto the table by the door with a clatter, hardly caring that it then fell to the ground. "Kihwa! I'm home! Where are you?" Still wearing his shoes, he ran in through the living room and then skidded to a halt. "Ki-Kihwa!"

Knife.

Blood.

Soo Hyun stood rooted to the spot in horror. "Wh--" The word came out in a breathless gasp. "Kihwa!" Heedless of his 'condition,' Soo Hyun ran forward and tried to wrest the knife from Kihwa's hand. "Put that down!"

Kihwa! I'm--

*fumbling with keys*

I'm home, I'm here!

I'm almost home! Hang on Kihwa!

...souls? I don't think they sell those at the... The store...

...you need... what?

All right! Okay! Just making sure! Sure you don't want me to get you anything? Ice cream? Cookies?

Are you SURE you're okay Kihwa?

Really? Well you should still rest up! Besides, if you feel sick again, I need to be with you.