The boy, who never talked
He was scared. He was so inconceivably scared. The fear trickled down his back in long lanes, pulling down over every cell in his body. It felt like millions of needles pierced deep into his soft skin and stuck right into his spine. The rolling fat, red blood drops drew down with red stripes alongside his spine. Like he was the empty white canvas, who got splattered with colors. Deep, red, beautiful colors. A shudder ran through the boy, and his body shook in fear the thought of him again. He wanted to escape the place so damn much, but he was frozen on the spot. He couldn’t move a single muscle.
His eyes took a quick glance through his surroundings. The darkness swallowed everything and made it hard for him to see anything. The only thing he could see was the endless flashback that continued to appear in his sight. The sickness of a boy’s smile, who never said anything. The smile was too sweet and innocent for the true monster it belonged to. Kenta saw it with his own eyes, and he felt disgusted by it. It was almost a nauseating feeling, but the fear somehow shadowed the feeling. And now Kenta was sitting in a dark alleyway, hiding behind some containers, where he prayed for his life that he wouldn’t be found.
Kenta took in a deep breath of air, trying to stabilize his breathing. He couldn’t breathe, it was impossible. The thought of how he always had protected the boy against people, who talked bad about his muteness, was overwhelming. No one fully understood why the boy was mute. Instead, they filled the whole community with false rumors and lies about the boy. Kenta fought against these rumors and tried his best to help the mute boy, who seemed to be grateful for the help. Slowly Kenta began taking a liking towards the boy, and they became friends. Best friends actually. Although the mute boy couldn’t really say anything against their friendship, he looked happy. Always with his glorious smile on his lips.
But now Kenta couldn’t see the boy in the same way, as he’d always done. His eyes were filled with fear, and his breath hitched. The never-ending silence was slowly eating him up, leaving the irrational and scaredness to deal with by himself. And with only that, he was as good as dead. He wanted to run away so badly. Flee away from it all.
A cold wind caught up on him in the little place he was hiding and made his slender body shiver, which only had on a white thin shirt and a pair of black jeans. His feet were practically frozen in his sneakers.
The shiver made all the needles move inside him, cutting deeper and splattering more blood onto the canvas. Almost drenched in red now, floating down the sides and crashing against the ground, leaving evidence of the crime scene.
Footsteps, that echoed inside the alleyway, hit Kenta’s hearing and he stiffed. Even more, than he did before. He felt the adrenaline pumping through his veins at an insane pace. It made him completely awake, and a lot more scared of the dark. He couldn’t still see anything, and that made that him even more frightened. He felt blind.
Kenta held his breath, he didn’t dare to breathe, knowing that he would begin to hyperventilate and then be heard. His heart was beating hard against his ribs, and the only thing he heard was his throbbing pulse in his ears. It drove him crazy that he couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore. The sound was gone. Even though he knew that the boy was mute, Kenta still somehow had the idea of that he would say something. Just a simple call of his name. It was like a pure instinct for him to think, that the other boy would do that.
Kenta tried to keep his hands still, which laid on the hard, cold asphalt in front of the place where he was squatting. They were shaking so much, that he could feel how the rough surface worked under his palms. The dirt rubbed into his soft hands and the sharp stones cut into the skin, making it sting. But Kenta couldn’t care less about it at that time. The needles went further into his back, hitting his bones and almost disappearing fully into his flesh.
Then he heard a stone trundle behind him. Kenta’s shaking breathing hitched. He could feel how the cold air suddenly got blocked from his back. Another blood drop fell. Slowly, he turned around, feeling completely paralyzed. His eyes wandered up on the shape, he faintly could see. But then his eyes landed on the shining white teeth, who glistened in the completely dark. They belonged to a smile Kenta knew all too good. And he widened his eyes in pure horror. At this point, he just wanted to escape, but he couldn’t. He was trapped. The mute boy had him trapped.
In the corner of his eye, Kenta saw the blinking knife. That one he feared the most. A wave of the feeling of the knife stabbing through his chest washed over him. He could feel how the metal would peak deep in, cutting his flesh up with such a fierce power that it would poke out on the other side. It made Kenta get the feeling of throwing up. But he didn’t.
“Please, what did I do?”, Kenta whispered desperately after an answer. But the mute boy never answered that question. Not even with a single hand movement. Kenta wasn’t thinking, as he grabbed around the knife, letting the blade cut slightly over his hand and quickly pulled it out of the mute boy’s hand. Blood dripped out of the sharp cut and thrilled down over the now red colored knife.
“Now tell me why you’re doing this!!”, he screamed at the mute boy, felt a wave of self-confidence and hardly pushed him backward, pointing the knife at him. The mute boy stumbled back, unbelievable still smiling. Kenta couldn’t understand why the boy still smiled, he found it provocative and as a threat against him. He took a step forward the stumbling boy and pushed him further back. The fury feeling growing inside him, as the memorizes kept pricking hardly on his right shoulder. The nail who twisted deeper into his shoulder, and at one point ripped the soft skin from each other and squirted all the memories into him. He saw how the knife got pulled out of the limb body. Blood splattered in all directions and made him look away. The echoes of the bobbling and rippling sounds, as he pulled the knife out, filled the room. Even with her face covered in blood blobs and her dark brown hair soaked in the dark red liquid, she looked peaceful. She wasn’t screaming, she was already dead. The blood was still running out of her wide-open wounds, mixing her yellow colored t-shirt into a deep orange one. It hurt Kenta’s sight just looking at the scene. Slowly, he moved his eyes slightly up to the side only to be met with the sickening sweet smile of his best friend. He mentally gasped. He was in complete shock and his eyes went all wide. The smile would haunt him for the rest of his life, he knew that. Every day, every hour, every second. Every time he closed his eyes, he would see the smile. He would never forget, and nothing could change that. Kenta would remember.
He raised his hands up and covered his mouth with them, while quickly backing towards the door. He couldn’t breathe. I can’t breathe. With difficulty, he tumbled to the door, bumped into it while desperately searching for the doorknob, faced the door with his back. The mute boy took a step towards him, and Kenta’s breathing began to rise really fast. Finally, he found it and tumbled out the door at such a speed, that he almost stumbled over his own feet and fell to the ground. He just wanted to get away as fast as possible. And running, was the only opportunity.
“Why did you kill her?! Tell me Sanggyun!! Why did you kill my girlfriend?!”, he clenched his teeth, while a tear threatened to fell from his eyes. His eyes covered in the layer of water glinted in the same way the knife did in the darkness. Kenta took another step forward the mute boy, now placing the peak of the knife against the spot just above his heart. No reaction. The silence filled the air with anxiety, and the needles in his back were sliding back and forth between the scared and furious end. Blood slided down Kenta’s back.
Slowly Kenta put more pressure onto the knife, forcing the mute boy to say something. But he didn’t. And then Kenta got enough of all these games. It only took a few seconds, and he lost possession of himself. He lost control. The knife slid deliciously further into the mute boy, easily torn his shirt apart and stabbing into his warm flesh. The red liquid quickly trickled down over the hand, which Kenta had a grab around the knife with. The blood drops left a warm and sticky feeling over his skin, while they kept rolling down his arm and soaked the sleeves of his white shirt. The sleeves who once belonged to an innocent boy, but no longer. Now it was stained with the result of a murder’s work.
And with that, Kenta stabbed the whole knife into the mute boy with such a strong power, that the boy fell on his knees. He didn’t let go of the knife yet, and by himself fell on his knees in front of the mute boy. Kenta took a quick glance at the other boy and immediately twisted his face in pure rage toward him. He couldn’t believe it. The mute boy still smiled. His best friend even wore his sickening smile, while he was in the middle of killing him with his own hands.
The mute boy didn’t scream, he couldn’t. It was just quiet. Deathly quiet. The echo of Kenta’s hard breaths filled the air, and it made himself even more scared. The adrenaline was pumping through his veins and made his hands shaking uncontrollably. The mute boy fell back towards the cold asphalt, hitting the surface hard. The boy’s breathing began turning unstable and hassle, while he just laid on the cold ground, blood running everywhere. And it was there, Kenta realized what he had done. His eyes widened in fear, as he dropped the knife out of his grasp, falling to the ground with a metallic echo lingering into the quiet night air. Fear-filled with tears running down his soft cheeks, he leaned over his best friend and very carefully slipped his bloody hands around his cold cheeks. “No..”, he breathed with an almost disappearing voice. His friend just smiled weakly up at him.
Even more fat tears rolled down over Kenta’s quivering face, landing on the mute boy’s chest and mixing up with all the out smeared blood. “No, this can’t happen, no no..” Kenta’s heart pulled even more together in pain. It ached so badly. And the tears streamed down his face, while the sobs came bobbling up from his heart and out of his mouth.
His heartbroken sobs were the only sound in the empty alleyway. His hands were shaking in a so extremely way, that he had to remove his grip around the mute boy’s cheeks and instead cling to the bloody shirt. The bloody shirt he himself had caused.
Kenta was almost blinded of all his running tears, that he barely saw how the mute boy, though all the bloody, sticky liquid covering his face, tried to open his mouth.
And then the mute boy opened his mouth, still with the smile on his lips, and said his first words, but also his last. A tear rolled down his chin.
“I love you, Kenta”
Now Kenta understood why Sanggyun never talked.
Thank you for reading this, I hope you enjoyed the thrill-ride ^^
