Things I (Never) Asked For

by AddyBby

Chapter 5: This is Who I Am

In the days that follow, Niki puts his head down and goes to class like nothing has changed. He sits in lectures, listening to professors drone about things he already knows. He takes a note here and jots down a figure there, doodling in the margins as though he isn’t wondering whether the guy two seats down who keeps on glancing at him has some reason to. 

Outside of class, Sunoo seems desperate to be with him, just near him; however, after his three day absence, his presence no longer feels natural. He is always texting Niki whenever they are apart and he hangs out in his dorm room again just like the old days, but now he sits up too straight and he looks away often, like he isn’t sure where to put his eyes. He must think that Niki is too weak to be left alone, or that he ought to be so ashamed of himself he can’t survive without the company. 

But Niki isn’t ashamed. Why should he be? He’s fine. Whatever happened, happened. It’s over with. And besides, he’s built for that shit. The last thing Niki wants is to be babied. Whatever feelings linger on are for him to handle. He doesn’t need those pity eyes. In fact, there is a part of him that wants to tell Sunoo to fuck off. But he doesn’t. He just puts his hood on and goes about his business, saying next to nothing in hopes that Sunoo will get the gist and eventually go away again. 

But he doesn’t. Days turn to weeks and Sunoo remains clingier than ever. He has even started sleeping over at the dorm again, much to the roommate’s horror. 

“It’s cool, man. You can crash wherever you want but you probably shouldn’t keep staying here. My roomie… You know,” Niki tries one night, half-hoping, half-dreading the moment when he will finally succeed in losing Sunoo again. He’s just tired of Sunoo’s worried looks when he smokes a bowl or two to shut his brain off each night. 

“I told them I’m out, so… Can’t stay there,” Sunoo says. He doesn’t meet Niki’s eyes. He’s picking at a little rip in the knee of his jeans. 

Normally, Niki can predict people’s actions, but this is a surprise. Sunoo actually left Beta Theta Phi? That’s ballsy for him. Niki is relieved and glad and pissed all at once. After everything he did to get Sunoo into that fucking fraternity—

He wants to ask a hundred questions:

Did Sunoo actually defend him for once?

What did he say?

What did they say?

What about the videos? Knowing Sunoo’s dramatic ass, he probably made a whole thing of it and pissed them all off. The last thing Niki wanted to do was draw more attention to himself and get those videos posted somewhere public. He doesn’t want to find himself on a pornsite. Hot pinpricks flame in his cheeks at the thought. He did what he did, but he would hate for the people he actually cares about to see him doing those things. 

A dozen other questions come to mind, but every time he tries to ask, he feels that familiar little scratching in the base of his throat, and that prickle in his eyes, so he shuts it down. Asking won’t change anything. Leaking his feelings all over the place won’t change anything. 

 

 

---

Weeks pass. Sunoo goes back to sleeping at Jake’s apartment but he still hangs around Niki like a nervous parent in his spare time. Burns heal red and puffy. Niki picks his chin up and gets on with things like normal. He goes back to the U-Cafeteria to eat dinner instead of hiding in his dorm room after class. Sunoo sits awkwardly beside him, trying to make conversation while Niki listens only half-heartedly, pretending he isn’t wondering what the frat guys at the next table over are watching on their phones, cracking jokes. 

“Are you okay?” Sunoo checks after a strange beat of silence. 

Niki twitches back to life, a dumpling half way in his mouth. “Uh– yeah.” He must have forgotten to respond. He takes the rest of his bite and puts the guys and their phones out of his mind. He’s just being paranoid. 

Jake picks up the conversation—something about a girl. Sometimes he’s there, sometimes he’s not, and when he is, he really only talks to Sunoo, but Niki doesn’t mind. 

Jake never sat with them before, though. Why would he bother now? 

Did Jake quit Beta Theta Phi like Sunoo did? After all the shit they went through to join, Niki can’t understand why they would just bail. Certainly not on his behalf. Jake isn’t even his friend. 

Did Jake watch that video too? 

If he doesn’t think about it too hard, Niki can briefly forget that the people sitting next to him at the dining hall table probably saw him like that. He doesn’t know what’s on the videos, but sometimes when he lets his mind wander back and start combing through that thick haze of lost memory, he gets flashes of it—little bits and pieces in 4D:

He feels himself getting fingered by two different people at once. It’s impossible to see them in his mind’s eye, but his body vividly holds the feeling of their long, probing fingers stretching him in different directions at the same time. 

He sees himself kneeling in a spotlight, on his hands and knees, surrounded by guys staring at him, gaping at him, laughing at him while he has an orgasm on that gray carpet—

Niki’s eyes slam back down onto his plate of dumplings. Even though he can’t be sure if he’s making it all up or if those things really happened exactly like that, he suddenly becomes incapable of looking anyone else in the eye. 

---

Sometimes in the evening after dinner, Niki makes himself go to the library to study for an upcoming test, because he knows if he goes back to his room he’ll just end up smoking and watching something until he falls asleep. He doesn’t care if he gets C’s and D’s, but recently he failed a few things. He can’t let things slip that far; someone will notice. 

He burrows into a corner booth in the fiction section for three evenings in a row. No issue. But on the fourth night, a group of guys comes through, browsing required reading for their 21st Century Western Novels course. Their loud conversation breaks Niki’s concentration. He glances up at the disturbance and, catching an eye by accident, finds himself staring at someone from out of a dream. A redhead. Memorable. 

The guy does the faintest double take, stares at Niki too—

Niki ducks back into his textbook—claustrophobic—his face heating. He doesn’t look up again, but he could swear that the group’s conversation goes hushed for a moment, whispering,

“...that guy from…” it's a tight whisper under their breath. Niki barely catches it. He fights the urge to look over there again and simply lets the moment pass, scoffing to himself at their ignorance, their callousness… 

Morons, he thinks, telling himself that his skin doesn’t crawl. The easiest feeling among the soup to swallow is his disgust at his own reaction. Why should he care? Fuck them. The blunt nails of his thumb and forefinger pick at the burn marks absentmindedly. As he washes up for bed that night, he notices berry red bruising beneath the damaged skin on his arm. 

The next day, Niki returns to the library just to tell himself he can, but he doesn’t study there very often afterward. 

 

---

By October, Sunoo acts normal around him again, and most of the time that’s a relief. Sometimes, though, if Niki pauses to think about the fact that he successfully fooled everyone into thinking he’s okay— again —he gets all stiff inside, like a corpse, and he has to distract himself so that he can remember how to breathe. 

Sunoo must have wrangled Jake away from the frat boys, at least most of the way, because he eats dinner with the two of them every single day, now. Niki wonders if they managed to navigate that smoothly or if they got themselves in trouble over him. He wants to ask, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to know where those videos went or what Heeseung said, and for once in his life, Sunoo doesn’t make a big deal out of it. 

One evening, Jake asks Niki questions about a writing assignment that he has to do. “I told him you’re the best. Better than even myself~” Sunoo teases in that grandiose way. It’s been months since his friend so much as mentioned writing. A flood of memories rushes through Niki all at once: all of the deep conversations the two of them used to have over words, and meaning, and feeling wrung out of the mind and dribbled over a page with utmost care. How naively he’d hoped, thinking maybe Sunoo understood him through his painstakingly crafted words…

Niki pushes the thought away. It’s nothing but a long lost wish now. Sunoo doesn’t understand him anymore than the rest of them. But he is here and that does count for something. 

So he takes a look at Jake’s assignment. Although this isn’t the kind of writing he actually excels at—just research and analysis of papers—it’s a welcome distraction from his own circular thoughts. They spend several dinners working on it together until Jake feels confident that he’ll get an A. 

“Yeah, except now he’s going to have to help you write your papers from now on or the teacher will know. It’s so obvious.”

“Hey! I could write this good! I basically wrote this! Niki just helped.” 

Niki just listens to them banter with a good-natured grin. It’s not the worst thing: having a third person at the table. Now Niki doesn’t have to struggle to talk with Sunoo. He can just be quiet and the conversation continues. It’s less awkward this way. And for as uninterested as Jake seemed of him in the beginning, Niki actually finds his boyish energy to be more comfortable than Sunoo’s excessive worrying. 

 

---

One evening just before Halloween, some guys from Beta Theta Phi brush past them in a hallway outside of the U-Cafeteria. An intentional shoulder bumps Sunoo from behind and sends him tripping into Jake with a dramatic yelp.

When Niki glances up at the jolt, one of the guys meets his eyes. He recognizes them, but it’s only a split second in the commotion so he can’t place them. All he can do is freeze when one of the guys makes a show of sticking his tongue out at him. 

A wave of disorientation ripples through Niki’s chest. He grinds his teeth to lock his jaw shut, feeling his chest clench with panic, like if he even parts his lips to breathe someone might rip his tongue out of his head—

But those guys go on without stopping. Just a little scoff and a laugh. 

Niki gulps down a shaky breath. Tucks the fear away.

Anger bubbles up behind it.

He clears his throat. “You guys okay?” he checks, not bothering to look at Sunoo while he speaks. He is watching the back of the guy's heads as they walk off. He’s struggling to remember their names at this point. They weren’t among the pledge masters.

“Yeah,” Jake grumbles from behind. He sounds pissed.

 

“Those dipshits are lucky they got to fuck you. You’re the best lay they’ll ever get in their pathetic, fucking lives.” 

The whisper of Ellen’s voice makes Niki crack a raw smile. His breath flutters in his chest, breaks— Yeah? Just imagine if I were sober. 

“At least six of them would have died cumming their brains out.” 

The way that pride and shame swirl together in his gut is nauseating. He almost laughs. The secret chuckle very nearly turns into a sob. His hand jerks upward to cover his face—rub it away—

 

“Niki? Niki?” Sunoo’s nervous voice is questioning beside him.

Niki jolts when a hand suddenly grabs his arm, just above the elbow. He jerks away from the touch on reflex. 

Dammit.

“I’m okay.” 

 

He pushes the thought of Ellen away too, blinks the tears away, and shuts his brain off. 

“I’m hungry,” is all he says. He charges into the cafeteria ahead of Sunoo and Jake. 

---

During Thanksgiving break, Niki goes home to be with his family. The atmosphere is warm, as always. His whole family is there—all of the aunts and uncles, his cousins, and his grandma. He eats his fill, smiles when he should, answers questions… 

But he hasn’t been sitting on the couch with his mom for five minutes before she quietly announces that she thinks he’s depressed. It’s an observation more so than a question. That’s what catches him off guard.

“Depressed?” he repeats. It was supposed to sound skeptical, but it’s flat even to his own ears. He feels heat rise in his cheeks. It’s like he’s a kid again, sitting right here on this couch. Of course he wouldn’t be able to hide it from her. Not in person. She goes on, keeping her voice low so that no one else in the family will overhear them beyond the communal chattering. She says he’s been strange on the phone—even quieter than usual, which is saying something. She concludes, saying, 

“You don’t seem like you’re enjoying life, Niki.”

Why would he be? What is there to be happy about? His classes are incredibly boring. The weather is shitty, but don’t worry; he’ll have more energy in the spring. No, he hasn’t been writing. “No, the Student Organization is a scam, mom.” He’s just muddling through school, trying to get it over with…

He misses Cami. “My ex,” he explains, but that’s an obvious cop-out. The look on his mother’s face betrays her doubt. Surely this isn’t the issue that has affected him so greatly. He doesn’t explain the fact that even if he wants to try dating again, he’ll never be able to get with someone like Cami at this school. Too many people must know about him, now. Nice people would run. 

No, she’s right. It’s more than just the end of a nice fling. He misses Ellen . For the past month, he hasn't been able to even think about her without crying, so he doesn’t think of her at all. And now he’s numb and he misses the thought of her. Without even that much, it feels like she’s really gone—and a sizable chunk of himself is gone with her. 

At last, this makes his mom relent somewhat. Apparently, grief over the death of a long time friend is reason enough because she doesn’t press him to explain his misery further. 

She says more things—They love him. They’re worried about him. They want him to be happy. They’re here for him. How can they help? What can they do? If he doesn’t want to talk to them, is there someone else he can talk to?—and outwardly, Niki does what he can to assuage her concerns. He is fine. There’s just a lot going on this semester. 

But inside, he knows she’s probably right. He hasn’t been okay for a very long time, since before this, before Cami, maybe even before Ellen.

“You were fucked in the head way before I got my claws in you. Don’t try blaming me.” 

He remembers Ellen’s scathingly sarcastic tone so vividly. All thorns but all love. It’s the only thing left of her, coming to him intrusively—a miserable companion—a specter roused by the rejection. 

Niki squeezes his eyelids shut and swallows thickly. “I’m okay, mom. I’m taking care of myself, don’t worry,” he says again. But when he untangles himself from her hug, he still sees concern written all over her face. 

 

 

---

After that conversation with his mom, back in his dorm room at school, Niki spends five minutes seriously considering going to therapy. Maybe someone can finally help him with all of his problems. And if not, what’s the harm in it? Maybe he should have done that a long time ago. Pretty much everyone goes to therapy nowadays, right? Plus his mother will be at peace to know that he’s doing something.

But talking about his feelings is something that Niki never learned how to do. Being there for others? Sure. Validating the people close to him? Yes, he’s great at that. But delving into his own?

His heart starts to pound as he digs through his wallet for those counseling agency business cards from the urgent care.

 

As soon as he lays eyes on them, something comes over him. It feels like a stone wall rises up in front of his face. The corners of his mouth pinch downward. His features go slack. His eyes darken. He feels it happening— feels himself shutting down—

 

What are you going to go to therapy for? If anything, you should go to Sex Addicts Anonymous, he thinks with a twinge of disgust. 

Everything he’s done… He would be the fucking pot calling the kettle black. He’s put himself in these situations. He’s accepted every second of it—asked for it over again—

If he hadn’t been so sexual, so young, his peers wouldn’t have seen him as such a pariah. Of course they treated him insensitively. Kids are judgemental by nature. 

And at that party… He took those drugs all on his own like he always has—practically asked to be used like a cheap, shameless whore because he knew Heeseung wanted him. He knew it, and he got that high anyway. 

They hurt him. Yeah? Well he practically asked them to hurt him by hurting himself in front of them! More than once. What were they supposed to think? He’s a fucking freak. Heeseung said so to his face more than once , and Niki never denied it. 

He asked to have his heart broken by daring to fall for someone like Cami who could never stay—

Asked to get swept up in Ellen’s nightmare and then he didn’t even chase her to Arizona. He didn’t run away with her and he didn’t save her. If he wasn’t sane enough to keep her alive, he should never have involved himself. He just wanted to help her, love her— 

And stupidly—still—when he should have known better by now —he still asked to be humiliated by ever hoping Sunoo could be what he so desperately craves in a friend. 

And now he’s supposed to go bitch about his feelings to some stranger? For what? No one cares when you bring all of your problems on yourself. If he caused the problems, how can he lament the results? 

 

Niki wads up the counseling agency cards in his fist and chucks them in the trash. He stalks back to his bed, thankful that his roommate is still out of town for the Thanksgiving break and isn’t here to see him in this emotional state. He hates to be seen feeling. After all he’s seen and done, he has no excuse to be weak anymore. 

He rubs his face with a shaky hand, pushing it all back down again. He’ll just smoke and crash, he thinks, and forget all about this blunder of emotion.

But the grinder is low on weed, and when he opens the mason jar where he keeps his bud, there’s nothing left but crumbs. 

For a second, he seriously considers calling that anonymous asshole who keeps texting him, offering molly for a good time. 

 

In the end, he chooses not to. He can already picture exactly how that would go and he doesn’t want to wake up with one more thing to ruminate on in the morning. 

---

He gets several robotic answering menus before he finally gets a person. 

“And why are you seeking counseling, Niki,” the phone lady asks. The way she repeats his name back to him makes him cringe. 

“Uh…” Why is he doing this again? “My family thinks I’m depressed. I—” He feels himself getting a little choked up. Dammit… He clears his throat, keeps his voice normal, “My girlfriend, my best friend. She passed away.” That seemed to work with his mom. Maybe he won’t need to say more over the phone. 

But then in the stretch of silence after her rote condolences, he realizes that he needs to say more or else he might get placed with yet another person that he can’t talk to—someone with that shocked look in their eyes when he tries to open up and explain— “I have sexual….” the word trauma lingers somewhere in the back of his mind but he wouldn’t say anything that dramatic, “...issues. I’m…” 

It’s hard to pick words. He swallows and tries again, and this time it comes. 

“I’m hyper-sexual maybe. I’ve had a lot of experiences that other people don’t understand, so it’s hard to connect with people. It’s been hard for my relationships, my friendships. I think I have low self-worth. I’m very confident. Like, I don’t hate myself or anything, but I don’t make good decisions for myself sometimes because I just don’t…care. I do care about other people, though.” He blinks absently, feeling naked. The words tumbled out of him by surprise; it was more than he expected. 

The woman on the phone responds with professionally detached empathy. She moves from one question to the next at a quick pace. 

“Are you currently in active addiction?” she asks. 

He thinks of the weed that he’s been smoking every night these past two months, and sometimes during the afternoons. He thinks of smoking with Ellen in bed, smiling ear to ear, of snorting coke off her collarbone at an amusement park a week before they dragged her away to Arizona for rehab. She was wearing a baby pink tank top with a low scoop neck, the hair all down her back pressed into a puff of red waves against the whitewashed brick on the side of the bathroom block.

He never believed that she was actually an addict despite their using together. She was coping. She was trying. He’s trying. He doesn’t need to smoke, it just helps a little bit when he needs to feel something else. Is that an addiction? “No.”

“Do you believe you are a danger to yourself or others?” 

“Uh…no. No.” 

“Do you believe you are currently at risk of suicide?”  

“No.” It’s somehow embarrassing to be asked that—like by calling this number, he must be so desperate and weak that he can’t handle life or something. 

He tries to rationalize his discomfort away. He imagines every single caller being asked these three questions; it’s not just him. 

 

He books the first available appointment: three and a half weeks from now. 

 

 

---

Several times in the gap between, he thinks about canceling. The more he thinks about it, the less he wants to talk about his problems. What’s the point? But when the day finally comes and he sneaks off for his appointment after class one Thursday afternoon, disturbingly sober, he suddenly feels anxious. He’s buzzing with nerves in the waiting room, twiddling his thumbs and picking at his cuticles, glancing at the door—

“Niki Nishimura?” He looks up from his lap to see a lady in a Christmas green sweater by the interior door. She has dark brown hair. Her voice is soft. Too gentle. It pokes at his feelings, like pressing on a bruise. 

 

“Just slap me in the face,” Ellen would say. She would always roll her eyes if she heard that hated, careful lilt in Niki’s voice, if he tried to love her properly, discuss her feelings without making little jokes, or take her pain too seriously, too tenderly. Instead she wanted to fuck. She wanted his hand on her throat. “Just hit me.” Her way of saying, “Don’t make me fucking cry right now. Let’s just be normal. Distract me; knock me out of it.” 

 

“Come on back this way,” the lady says in that same careful tone that makes his hackles raise. He scowls at the inspirational poster on the wall in the back hallway as they near her office. 

When he’s seated in a little chair in the corner of the room, the lady sits at her computer and introduces herself as Talia. She types a quick sentence or two, covers her lap with a lavender blanket, and turns her shoulders to face him squarely. Under her warm brown gaze, he immediately feels a sense of foreboding, almost as if this woman is a threat to him, that gaze a dangerous siphon ready to suck whatever he has hidden away inside of his darkness into the light, and he wants to shrink away from it. He looks to the table at his right. There is a little box of fidget toys next to a box of tissues. 

 

“It’s nice to meet you, Niki. I’m Talia,” she begins. Her voice takes on a lower tone, still warm and careful, but less performative than in the lobby. “It’s a big step for anyone—coming to talk to someone—and I’m glad you’re here. I’m looking forward to getting to know you and I hope that you will get comfortable talking with me as time passes. For today, is there anything you would like to start with?”

Start with? He flicks a skeptical glance in her direction. “Um…” 

 

In his long silence, he expects her to jump in and supply him with some kind of starter question, or a suggestion of what he should say. But she does not. Talia merely looks at him evenly, her face soft and open. 

 

It’s strange. 

 

“Uh…” He picks up again after a tight breath, “What do you think we should start with? Did they tell you what I said on the phone?” 

She looks pointedly at her computer and nods. He can see the screen from this angle. There is a big open box in blue that must be his patient file. There is only a sentence or two typed at the top but he can’t read it from here. 

Only a sentence or two for everything he's dealing with? Did he not explain it properly when he called? 

Talia speaks again, “I would like to hear from you . What's new on your mind today?” 

What the fuck is he supposed to say? Hi, I’m depressed? I fucked God-knows how many people at a party when I was wasted and my best friend doesn’t know what to do with me anymore? He never has? No one does? No one understands me? I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember?

 

How deeply he has longed for someone to know him, to ask him, but now that someone is actually holding the space for him to explain himself, he realizes how hesitant he is to actually speak. It’s hard. 

 

 

---

 

 

It stays hard for several weeks. All he talks about for the first few meetings are trivial things, just venting about his day, and even that feels overly vulnerable. His own feelings and complaints sound petty to him. Letting words of frustration, anger, or even sadness come out of his mouth for someone else to hear and potentially judge does not come naturally to Niki. He tamped all of that down in his youth—learned to save it all for himself…

Besides, being such a good listener for other people, Niki always gets cut off or squeezed aside in conversations. He never gets this much time to get things off his chest. It feels weird!

 

However, the more he does it in Talia's office, the more acceptable it begins to feel. 

 

By late January, it starts to feel a little less threatening to speak without being prompted. His group project partners aren’t pulling their weight again and it’s starting to piss him off. “I’m not their fucking dad. I’m not here to do all their work for them.” He scoffs and goes still, feeling regretful to have cursed at her. But she doesn’t seem to care in any way, and her face holds no judgment. In fact, she pushes him further, 

“What else do you resent them for?” 

 

He takes a moment to think and then lets it come. “They’re so entitled. Not everyone obviously, but most of the students here are obviously rich. They’re just here to party. They don’t care if they fail—which—is fine. Whatever. But then don’t make us all do these stupid group projects, then! Because they know that one person who really wants to be here for school is going to get them a passing grade. And they know the professor doesn’t give a shit. No one cares. They’ll just get away with it.” 

 

“What else?” she asks in his pause. 

 

More? That feels like a lot of venting already. He takes a second to think and he finds—yes—there is more. “This one guy sends the dumbest memes to our group chat. He’s such an asshole.” 

“How so?” 

“They’re…offensive.” A scrunch of distaste turns Niki’s mouth downward. “Just…making fun of women, gay people, liberals…” The piece of shit has even sent pornographic clips to the group with laughing emojis, Niki suddenly remembers. It makes his chest feel tight. He rubs a trembling hand across his collarbone several times before finally concluding, “He’s just a piece of shit.” 

“That sounds like a very uncomfortable environment to work in,” Talia affirms with a nod. 

“It is. It bothers me,” he agrees. Even that much, he wouldn’t normally admit.

She nods. “I think his behavior would be upsetting to most people, but considering some of the things you mentioned originally, it makes sense that that kind of attitude would be particularly triggering for you.” The way she glances over at her computer screen, open to his file piques his interest. They’ve spent so much time talking about nothing but daily annoyances over the past few weeks that Niki almost forgot she had any deeper knowledge of him. 

The surprise makes him slightly defensive. “Why?” he challenges lightly. What does she really know about him? Nothing aside from whatever overly emotional, confused admissions he’d said to the intake lady on the phone. Apparently no more than two sentences worth of information, he remembers wryly. 

“Well, you mentioned that you’ve had a variety of sexual experiences, which is perfectly normal. And yet, to have someone speak insensitively about these kinds of topics in an inappropriate, mixed setting must feel very unsettling. Not to mention that you’ve had very meaningful relationships with women. Your best friend…”

“Ellen,” he supplies, his gaze dipping back down to the fidget toy in his lap. 

 

“Can you tell me about her?” Talia nudges. 

 

He isn’t sure if he’s ready, but he thinks he owes it to himself to try. He’s been coming here for almost a month and they haven’t talked about any of the things that he came in to work through. Talia has been patient, she’s been listening, and when he clears his throat to try, he finds that it isn’t as hard as it used to be to let the words come out. 

At the end of their forty minute session that day, Niki leaves feeling like he just came out of a long bath, kind of loose and tired. It wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be to cry in front of someone. It was sort of cathartic. 

---

From there, the flood gates open much more easily. What once felt as bracing and dreadful as pulling teeth becomes routine, and during the time apart for February break, Niki actually misses his weekly sessions with the therapist. 

 

“What do you talk about?” his mother asks shyly, her gaze dipping into the mug of afternoon coffee in her hands. It’s the last morning of his trip home and the two of them are alone in the house while the others are off skiing. 

A few weeks ago, Niki would have done anything to avoid telling her, but somehow it isn’t quite as humiliating to mention little things that make him feel anymore. “We haven’t gotten into anything too deep yet. Mostly I just vent about people at school and how it was growing up… We talked about Ellen,” He bites the inside of his cheek and sighs.  

His mom’s familiar hand reaches for his. 

“And Sunoo,” Niki adds, clearing his throat. 

“How is Sunoo?” Mrs. Nishimura softly asks. “I never hear about him anymore. Are you still close?” 

“We still hang out a lot,” he admits. He isn’t used to touching anyone while he opens up, but the warmth of his mother’s hand feels like home. “We eat together every day at school, but we’re definitely not as close anymore.” 

“Did something happen?” By the hesitancy in her question, it's obvious that she assumes something came between them. She’s reverently rubbing over the scar on his fingertip. He hasn’t said a word about it. She hasn’t demanded an answer, either—probably because he went through a cutting phase in high school. With their history, she doesn’t have to speak the words; the question is always there between them. 

But maybe the therapy is working, because instead of lying or just brushing everything off with another dishonest declaration of ‘I’m okay,’ Niki finds himself saying, “ I’m not ready to talk about it. I haven’t even spoken with my therapist about it yet.” He gives her an apologetic look, but thankfully she doesn’t seem offended. 

She gives him a sideways little hug. “I’m sorry, honey.” 

“Yeah,” he says, instead of ‘It’s okay,’ and the subtle difference actually makes him feel a little jolt of pride. Maybe his mom feels it too, because she’s rubbing his arm a little more forcefully now as if to spur him on. 

“I’m here for anything. Whatever you need, honey.” 

“Thanks, mom.”

“ So glad you’re talking to someone.” 

 

When it feels like she’s going to pull away and end the embrace, Niki drops his head down on her shoulder. 

 

“Oh. Honey.” 

Niki wriggles his chin to bury his nose more deeply into her woolen sweater. With his eyes closed, he wraps his long arms around her and breathes her in, desperate for the physical comfort. It’s what he needs even if it seems to hurt him every time, dragging up painful memories from that buried part of his memory.

She’s shifting her hips to face him on the couch so that she can hold him properly. His breaths get shallow and fluttery.

“Oh, Niki. I’m so sorry, honey.”

The feeling of her hand rubbing up and down his back takes him right back to being a child, to feeling like this when he hugged her—like he was full of dirt, trying not to stain the couch by not telling her. He still never told her.

Her voice gets high and squeaky. “What’s wrong?” 

He can’t really remember, and that’s a big part of the problem. He’s hunched over on her shoulder, biting back the urge to ask. 

Would she remember more about that family and those kids? He was so little and it has been so long now. 

 

He’s afraid to ask. 

Maybe he remembered it all wrong! 

Maybe he made it all up. 

 

If he hadn’t been in therapy for a month and a half already, he would never have been able to get the question out. “D-do you remember the Popovićs?” 

The hand rubbing his back stalls in surprise, in thought maybe. His mother’s memory isn’t the best. The kids are always reminding her where she left her glasses, or the name of that restaurant they ate at a few weeks ago. He doesn’t expect much, but she says that she remembers them. 

He pulls out of the embrace just enough to look at her face. “Do you remember me hanging out at their house a lot? For play dates or something?” 

“Yes.” There’s a wrinkle of metered confusion on her brow, trying to figure out where he’s going with this. “Mr. Popović was our accountant. You were friends with the youngest boy.”

“From preschool.” Niki’s very first friend. 

“Right. Yes.” She nods, thinks… Then she shakes her head in question. “Why?” 

He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. There are so many memories—just fragments of things that he can never make sense of, but for some reason, he can never forget. They’re core memories from when he was so young, and yet there’s no context, no sense to any of it. He wipes the building wetness from his eyes with the side of his hand. 

How is he supposed to broach this topic? He hasn’t talked about this with Talia either, hasn’t even thought to bring it up with everything else going on. Why is it coming up right now? 

But he is so curious. As much as he likes to forget it, it’s always there lurking. It’s this thing that’s been eating him from the inside out all these years, so he forces himself to keep asking, “Was I there a lot?” 

“Sometimes,” Mrs. Nishimura nods thoughtfully. “Yeah. In elementary school. I worked late. You would go over there after school to play with the kids.”

“They had two kids, right? The two boys—”

“Three, I think.”

Niki raises an eyebrow at that. He doesn’t remember three. 

“I think they moved out west,” his mother goes on. From the way her lips are pursed, he can tell she’s racking her brain to try and remember. 

 

He doesn’t really want to say it, but it wants to be said. 

It’s like a bubble in his chest that grows as he watches his mother try to remember for him. It grows and fills him until he’s choking on it, realizing that she can’t possibly know what he hasn’t told her. When it bursts in his mouth, he tastes bile on the shameful phrase, “I think I got molested over there, mom.” 

The rest of the conversation is a blur of questions and resolute sniffing as he refuses to cry. 

 

His mom is quietly devastated for him. She holds him until he suddenly wants space. 

 

What is there to say? Whatever happened occurred over 15 years ago. The only thing left of it are the feelings and the questions. There are no good answers. 

There is a part of him that’s glad to have breached this long held secret at last, even if he only scratched the surface. It feels like a relief to have it partially out of himself. If he thrusts it forward into the light, will it become less heavy?

But there’s another part of him—a big fucking part—that feels like a liar for even claiming such a thing. Molested? Why did he choose that word when he tried to tell her? Is that what happened to him? He certainly wasn’t raped . He was a perverted little kid having sex with other children. In all of his memories, he was fully participating. Cumming on the carpet. 

 

And then the embarrassment comes. By the end of the conversation, he has crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his chin down. "I’m sorry,” he mutters over his shoulder at his mom, gasping up a dry, broken sob as he flees the couch. 

Back to square one. 

---

“It’s my fault,” Niki blurts out angrily. “If I wasn’t like this ,” he throws his hand into the air and waves it around at chest level to indicate that his entire being is to his disliking, “then it wouldn’t have affected me like this.” He steals a glance at Talia, eyes narrowed with emotion before glaring back out the window of her office. What must she think of him? The dimly lit parking lot is blanketed in a sheet of snow. It has been almost a week since he attempted to tell his mother, and ever since then he’s been particularly emotional. Everything pisses him off. 

The therapist sounds maddeningly calm despite his emotions. “Do you really believe that?” 

“Yeah,” he scoffs at himself. Fuck. He does. What else is he supposed to think?

“If what you experienced happened to another child, would you blame them?” 

Niki can’t help but scowl. As if he hasn’t asked himself these same questions a million times!

If the same thing had happened to another child, would they have been able to just forget what they learned and move on? Maybe sex wouldn’t have become such a core part of them like it did for him. Maybe Niki's genuinely just a slut at his core. 

That’s why that experience altered the course of his entire fucking life: he obviously liked it and trying to say otherwise feels like a damning lie, the ultimate hypocrisy. He came on the floor. People saw him. There’s no denying these facts. 

“I understand that you’re supposed to ask me that question, and I’m supposed to say, ‘Of course not. How could it ever be the child’s fault.’ Right? But it’s more complicated than that. It’s not like I was raped by some pedophile, okay? That’s not…” 

Jesus Christ, he can’t believe he’s talking about this…

Niki gulps down an furiously emotional breath and tries to recompose himself. “I don’t remember everything that happened, but it was just kids being kids. And I did it too.” He feels his face twist as a sob tries to fight its way out and covers it with a shrug. “I liked it. I never stopped. I’ve been masturbating since I was four years old. I had sex with the first friend I ever made and I’ve been doing it with every one since then.” 

He has sex the way other people discuss the weather. Casual. Practiced. Expected. Whore, he hears. If that’s not a whore, what is? He rubs at the wrinkled space between his brows with a trembling hand. 

“Sexuality, like anything else, is a learned behavior, Niki. Particularly if it’s learned that young,” Talia is saying seriously. “It makes perfect sense that your earliest sexual experiences and beliefs would carry on throughout the rest of your life. Four-year-olds have no concept of sexuality. What you're describing isn’t just ‘kids being kids.’” 

“No, it’s—” 

She doesn't let him cut her off this time. “It’s very likely that the children in that household were sexually abused.” 

He blinks at that, going still. 

“Normal sexual exploration between peers is different than what you’ve described,” she goes on. Her voice is quiet and low, but serious, and he feels pinned to the back of his chair as he listens without looking at her. “Playing doctor, exploring anatomy—things like that are not the same as exposure to pornography and complete sexual acts. I’d like you to go home tonight and read more about Child on Child Sexual Abuse. Perhaps it will provide you with some more context for your experiences.” 

He scoffs defensively at that, but she doesn’t stop there,

“I do have a hand-out I can print for you on your way out today, but what I want you to really take away from this conversation is that you were four. Four.” 

He shoots her a scathing look, his face turning pink with shame. “I know.” 

“Four. Four years old.” The repetition takes him aback. He meets her eyes steadily for the first time in over an hour. “Do you know any four year olds? How can a four-year-old possibly be at fault?” 

---

That night he falls down the black hole that is COCSA. First he reads the informational sheet that Talia gave him at the office and he learns that kissing with tongue, oral, reaching orgasm, being exposed to pornographic material—all these things that he’s fairly sure he did with those kids—are not typical childhood exploration. 

The more he reads, the more clear the memories become. They’re such old memories that he can’t be certain if they’re real or if they’re just stories he told himself to make sense of his habits, but he can hear those kids telling him, ‘how to please’ people, and that certainly doesn’t seem innocent. 

Then Niki finds the reddit threads. 

He spends hours reading through post after post by people with stories eerily similar to his own—not knowing whether or not they had been wronged in some way, plagued by vague memories and a lifetime of sexual dysfunction in their wake. 

For all of them, the most confusing part was trying to detangle blame. Where does one put the blame when everyone involved is incapable of consent? In some of the stories, the perpetrating children were much older than the victim, but in many cases, the difference in power came down to knowledge, not age. 

 

“This is NOT a chat for perpetrators! Please see the COCSA Perpetrators thread,” said a pinned banner near the top of the page. 

Seeing that makes his stomach drop. What if the other children involved saw him as the perpetrator somehow? What if their memories were different from his? How could anyone ever know the truth when they were that young and impressionable? 

 

Talia had said, “It’s very likely that the children in that household were sexually abused.” 

Those brothers… 

Niki remembers having sex with both of them. The more he thinks about it, the more he remembers how they seemed excited to teach him those things, particularly the older one. Even though peering at these memories is like trying to see through muddy, dull glass, Niki feels a little relief as he decides that he couldn’t have been a perpetrator in those situations. He had no idea, no concept whatsoever that what they were doing was sex. 

But could those boys really be faulted either? Someone had to teach them first. Maybe their parents abused them, maybe a teacher or a coach. Maybe someone touched the oldest boy that Niki can't remember, and then he did it to Niki’s friend and the middle one, and then they both did it to him—

 

All at once, Niki is blinking through angry tears, glaring blankly into the scathing glow of his computer screen. 

 

He didn’t, but did those other kids understand what they were teaching him? Did they know what they were doing to him? Did they realize that once they showed him these things, he would never be able to forget them? That they would become a part of him?

Back then Niki had no idea that what was happening was irreversible—a switch that could never be unflipped. 

Did they just not care that they were altering his consciousness forever, and he would never be able to see others the same way ever again—especially himself?

 

He wants to blame them. He wants to hate them.  

 

Whoever touched those boys first ruined Niki’s chances at a normal, healthy life by extension and it’s not fucking fair! He has never seen himself as an innocent bi-stander who was caught in the crossfire, but suddenly he can picture it so clearly: His little four year old self going to a playdate without a care in the world and coming back home with a raw asshole, the knowledge of how to make someone cum, and no fucking idea what to do with that. 

 

And shame. Why was he so ashamed that he never told anyone? 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels more than hears the answer. They told you not to tell anyone. It has to be a secret. 

 

And his mother, unknowing, telling him that touching himself was dirty. 

“I feel so fucking gross,” Ellen said as she stepped out of the shower. “It’s like…” She made her whole body quake in an exaggerated shiver. Niki watched her dry off from where he sat, perched on the toilet with the Stephen King novel he’d been pretending to read to give her the illusion of emotional privacy. 

That was the first and only time he’d actually been there when it happened. Normally she called him afterward when she was already furious, but this—her shame—was far worse than her anger. 

He never imagined that anything would happen to her while he was literally there. 

He’d had to wait in her bedroom, just sitting there wondering what was taking so long after her step-dad shouted at her to come down to his office in the basement. 

About ten minutes in, Niki realized that something was wrong. He should have charged downstairs to interrupt. He should have checked on her, but the way his own anxiety suddenly rose from the grave of memory to keep him sitting there, fucking terrified, didn’t make sense to him at the time. 

She came back upstairs after fifteen minutes unable to even look at him until after she showered. 

This huge personality reduced to a mouse in the span of fifteen minutes…

 

“I’m sorry,” Ellen was saying, wet hands shoving the book out of his grasp to force her way into his lap. Niki shook his head, trying to keep them both from falling off the precarious porcelain perch. “I’m really sorry you were here.” 

“No.” His right hand shot out to brace against the wall. She was knocking him over. “Let’s go to the bed.” 

“Please.” 

 

“I’m sorry,” he choked out later, when they were staring blankly at the ceiling, not touching each other. How miserably short that phrase fell. It didn't even feel worth saying. 

Maybe if he wasn’t so broken himself he could have been a bigger help to her back then. As it is now, the way his eyes burn at the memory is enough to confirm that this is why he felt so triggered at the time. 

 

He keeps scrolling through the reddit pages until well after three o’clock in the morning. He reads every post like it might be his own story, questions of “Was I Abused?” and “Was this COCSA?” burning into his mind along with the comments confirming what apparently no one is capable of believing on their own. Between regular childhood memory loss and traumatic memory repression, almost no one had full memory of what occurred, which left them confused and shackled with the blame. 

 

When he finally goes to bed, he considers that maybe he knew it all along. Maybe that’s why he blurted that out at his mom’s house last week, and maybe that’s why he felt triggered whenever Sunoo used to callously ask him about his sexual experiences. 

Maybe that’s why calling himself a weird slut was a defense mechanism but feeling that judgment from his friend was so terrible. 

Because Niki didn’t pick this. 

---

 

 

“Sunoo asked me to go to this SA party with them, but I don’t think I’m going to go.” 

“Why’s that?” 

It’s the end of March. Midterms have just ended. Niki still sits with Sunoo and Jake every day at dinner, and occasionally he’ll join them for an extra activity on or off campus, but he has no interest in going to a party. 

“Um…” Two plus months into therapy and Niki still hasn’t managed to bring up the Beta Theta Phi party. It gets stuck in the base of his throat whenever he tries. By the way the energy in the room dips whenever he gets near it, he can tell that Talia is just waiting patiently for him to open up. It’s nice of her not to pry, but sometimes he wishes she would just come out and demand it from him. Leaving him with the responsibility to navigate his own feelings is like a double edged sword sometimes, though these conversations have taught him a lot about how to navigate them. 

“Well,” he tries. The fidget toy is in his hands again. “Honestly…when I’m with Sunoo in public, I get this feeling— Like all of a sudden I’m tripping over my own feet and the ground is right there to knock my teeth out. And he just keeps walking. And I look over at him like, ‘Why didn’t you catch me? Did you not see me fall?’ but he’s just standing there looking down at me while the people walk by. He doesn’t know what to do with me.” He swallows thickly. “I guess I don’t trust him.”  

There’s a look on Talia’s face that Niki can’t place. Is she…pleased? After a moment, she says, “That was quite poetic. Have you been writing again?” 

“No. I haven’t written anything for myself in a long time.” 

“I remember that you mentioned your writing in one of our first meetings. It might be good for you to get back to it while you’re processing these things. I’m sure it helps you cope.” 

It used to. Before he connected with Sunoo over his writing only to be spectacularly let down when the other boy did not, in fact, understand him at all. 

The therapist must see the wry contemplation on Niki’s face. She clucks her tongue. “Can you tell me what happened between the two of you?” 

Finally a direct question. Niki knows how to answer those. He’s never been one to shy away from the basics when asked. “He needed help with something. Kind of a big thing, actually. He needed to figure out room and board, so I let him stay with me until my roommate was fed up. We tried to figure out something else for him so he wouldn’t have to drop out but nothing was working out. Eventually we decided to pledge.” 

He feels the urge to stop there, but he forces himself to go on, rushing to get it out. 

“It was my idea. You know how it is; it’s fucked up." He hopes she understands because he doesn’t want to explain crawling around in his boxers, humiliating himself in front of dozens of people, drinking himself unconscious multiple nights in a row, getting spit on and slapped in the face just for ‘fun.’ “I did a lot of shit for him because…you know. He’s so sheltered. I didn’t want him to get hurt—”

He fully intends to go on. This is just a basic explanation. But for some reason he’s getting choked up so fast that he can’t control it. He tries to blink back tears but they rush up anyway. His nose fills and he can’t breathe without sniffling—

 

“Dammit.” 

 

He sees Talia nod out of the corner of his eye while he stares out the window. He blinks and the tears fall anyway. 

 

“Jesus. Yeah. I did a lot for him.”

“You didn’t want him to get hurt. You were being a good friend.” 

“I tried,” Niki shrugs, cracking a raw smile as he paws at his face. “I don’t know how to be friends. I’ve never… I don’t know.” 

“You were thinking about him. You were trying to protect him, right?” Talia leans forward, elbows on her knees to chase his gaze because he’s clearly floundering. He can’t figure out where to look. What is he supposed to do with his hands? “Niki?”

“Yeah.” He has to bite the inside of his cheek to meet her gaze. 

“You were trying to protect your friend. You didn’t want him to get hurt. That’s very noble of you.” 

 

He says nothing in response, even when she nods at him for some kind of acknowledgement. 

 

“That’s kind. But…” Her brow furrows with emotion. “But what about you, Niki?” 

What about him? He blurts out, “I don’t care if I get hurt. I’m already hurt.” 

What a terrible answer. He hears it play back in his mind in the long silence that fills the therapist’s office. 

The saddest part is that it’s true. 

He drops his head in both hands and starts sobbing. 

It’s a long time before he looks up again and the woman doesn’t rush him. 

 

At last, puffy eyes rise from his fingers in search of her. His breaths are still raw, snagging in his hoarse throat, but he manages to hold her gaze like it’s a lifeline to drag himself away from those damning words he just said.

“You don’t deserve to be hurt,” she says, like it’s a fact. “You are worthwhile in the same way that your friend is.” 

How fucking obvious is that? He breaks into a twisted smile, all remorse. A pained little chuckle, “Okay.” 

“Can you say that for me?” 

“Huh?” 

“‘I don’t deserve to be hurt.’ ‘I am worthwhile.’”

 

He can’t help but grimace. It’s going to sound stupid. He hardly believes it—

 

“Say it out loud.” 

 

“I…” He heaves in a heavy breath. It’s not that he deserves to be hurt, necessarily. It’s more like, if someone’s going to be hurt, it might as well be him because it won’t make any difference. But Talia is waiting for him to say it. He spits it out even though it feels utterly fake, “I don’t deserve to be hurt.” 

“Yes. Again.” 

“I don’t…” His throat constricts on it.

 

Why is this so hard to say?

 

He has to force it out one syllable at a time, through tears. “I don’t deserve to be hurt.” 

“‘I am worthwhile.’”

Is he? At this point, he’s not really worth protecting. He’s already been through it all. What’s the point? But the way that Talia is looking at him right now… He sees something in her eyes that reminds him of his mother. He certainly matters to her, and he knows how badly she wants him to be okay. 

He is someone’s child. Intrinsically, just as a human being, it must be true. “I am worthwhile,” he recites, feeling mostly blank, but open.  

 

Child of God, he hears, vague and far away. 

 

“Yes. You are.” Talia gives him a final look and then turns to make a note on her computer. 

“I’m mad at him,” Niki bursts out through tears. He didn’t let himself feel any of the anger before this very moment, but if what he just said is true—if he is worthwhile despite it all—then Sunoo deserves his wrath. “I did so much for him and he didn’t even think about me.” 

“Have you confronted him?” 

“No. He makes me feel like shit.” That’s not really fair, but he has to say it just to get it out of himself. Niki blows his nose with an embarrassingly loud honk. He chucks the tissue in the little trash can near her desk and tries again, more evenly this time. “He— He’s trying so hard. Like, he’s obviously trying to make it up to me, but it’s so uncomfortable. I get that feeling . Like I’m falling and he’s not gonna catch me. He’ll just watch and cringe and say ‘sorry.’ But it’s fucking meaningless.”

Talia turns back from the computer to face him properly. “It sounds like he has really let you down. In very significant ways. But clearly you value the relationship.”

Yes. He does. As much as Sunoo’s lack of understanding has wounded him, Niki still doesn’t want to lose the friendship. When he nods his confirmation, Talia continues, 

“You mentioned that he was sheltered. Is it possible that he truly doesn’t know how to support you even though he’s doing his best?” 

 

Niki sucks his teeth and looks away. His mind wanders back over all the times he failed Ellen, all the times he was there and he tried, but he didn’t save her. She wouldn’t let him, or he couldn’t figure out how. Or he was too traumatized himself to even navigate an attempt. 

 

That’s no excuse. 

“I’m still mad at him.” He risks a glance at the therapist and finds her watching him seriously. “I expected more from him. I don’t know! Were my expectations too high? Did I set myself up?” 

There he goes again, blaming himself, rationalizing why he deserved it. All at once, Niki can hear it. Why hadn’t he noticed this before?

He starts over. “Sunoo knows what it’s like to be hurt, too, you know? His ex-boyfriend raped him. And the way he read my writing—it felt like he would understand me. But when everything happened, Sunoo acted like nothing happened, or like it was my fault. Like—” The skin of his nose scrunches up in a sneer. “Like once again, it didn’t happen to me; I did it. It doesn’t count. Again.” 

If they had just pinned him down and fucked him bloody while he begged—then maybe it would be rape. If Mr. Popović had cornered him in the bathroom and put his big, grown-up dick in Niki’s mouth or forced it in his ass, then maybe he could know he’d been abused and not just accidentally sexually awakened. Maybe then he wouldn’t be able to find a way to pin the blame on himself.  

Talia’s low, metered voice cuts through the haze of thought. “What happened, Niki?” 

He blinks several times, coming back to the present moment. He’d almost completely forgotten that he was sitting here in her office, “Um…” 

 

He might as well tell her at this point. 

 

“I don’t know. I don’t remember everything.” Again. Niki shakes his head at himself in disgust. 

“What do you remember?” 

What does he remember? He was so fucking high. How the fuck did he get that high? That wasn’t weed or booze. It wasn’t anything he’d tried before. It’s scary to try and remember it, but he squints into the memory, looking for any pieces he can scrap up from off the floor of himself—

 

—he’s making out with Heeseung on the couch in the living room, being hard and then suddenly confused— 

—struggling to breathe, his heart pounding, pounding, pounding in his chest like a luggy old engine that might stop at any second. Like his body forgot how to breathe and if he didn't tell himself to do it each and every time, it will just stop altogether. Breathe. You’re okay. You’ll be okay. And they’re fighting about whose dick gets to be in his mouth—

—”I don’t understand you. Are you even gay?” Sunoo asked—

—and his body—his cursed, filthy body—just keeps sucking, keeps riding, keeps pleasing them just like he was taught even as his cheeks flame with humiliation and his brain goes far away—

—Heeseung is all over him, holding him up like a puppet. He says, “Stick your tongue out.” The guy from Beta Theta Phi slams into Jake in the hallway and sticks his tongue out at Niki with a crooked sneer, and now Niki will never do that again. 

He grinds his teeth, clamping his jaw shut at the memory. The words come grinding out through his teeth, “I remember getting way too high, and then I slept with everyone at that party, probably.”

 

Silence. 

 

Niki looks to the therapist only to find her blank-faced, as though he never spoke at all. He chokes on his next breath, narrowly holding back the low, miserable keen; how fucking pathetic. He hangs his head.

“I’d been taking Sunoo’s shots for a long time and somehow I got…way too high.” He gulps on tears. “I got drugged,” he sobs. Yes. That’s what happened. As if from far away, he can hear Talia’s low noise of recognition. He goes on, stammering thickly, “They picked me for their sick, fucking thing. And they recorded it—apparently—because Sunoo watched it!” Niki throws his hands up, at a loss, before covering his face again. 

“What do you mean?” 

He laughs at that. Bitterly. Fuck , his mouth tastes like poison. Why does no one understand him? Must he spell everything out in the plainest terms possible, without any of the nuance? 

All of his skin is vibrating; he’s trembling with rage. “A bunch of guys raped me, alright? Is that how you want me to say it?” 

“Is that what happened, Niki?” 

 

He knows 100% that they took advantage of him in that state, but he is still who he is. Rape is a strong word for someone as slutty as Niki Nishimura to say. 

 

But…if he removes himself from the story and imagines someone else in his place the way that Talia has often asked him to do, he would say yes without hesitation.

 

So why does it still feel like an exaggeration when he manages to rasp out, “Yes.” 

---

Why did Heeseung pick him? Niki wonders later that night. He’s physically and emotionally exhausted from today’s session, but he can’t stop ruminating on that party now that he’s dredged it up from the depths. Was Heeseung mad that Niki turned down his advances the first time they kissed? Or was he always the plan? 

 

And the most hurtful question of all—the one that’s kept him up at night, lurking like a poison in his subconscious: Did Sunoo know what they were going to do?

Niki can’t bring himself to believe that. He knows Sunoo. Whether the other boy was jealous of Niki or annoyed with him, Sunoo would never let those guys drug him and rape him if he’d understood what would transpire. 

Sunoo can be a bitch, but he isn’t a bad person. 

Maybe a few weeks ago, that hollow assurance would have been enough for Niki to tough it out and ‘be okay,’ but somehow Niki’s own rationalizations just aren’t enough anymore. It used to be. Back before he started therapy, he could live his whole life on his own, just inside of his own head. Not anymore.

“I think I want to have a conversation with Sunoo about everything,” he announces at therapy the following week. “But I don’t really know how to go about it. Do you have any advice?” 

Talia tilts her head in thought. “Well, let me ask you this. What are you hoping to get out of this conversation?” 

“That’s a good question.” He raises a hand to his mouth in thought. Every once in a while, Talia asks him questions that he genuinely would never have thought of on his own. It’s in those little moments that he remembers she’s a professional, not just someone he vents to. “Um…” 

 

What does he want to get out of it? He thinks of everything that their friendship has been lacking since this whole thing started, everything they’d lost...

At one time, Sunoo was an irreplaceable friend but now Niki can't be around him without partially dissociating. He can't be real with the other boy anymore. The risk of further rejection just feels too great. 

 

“I think he’s sorry, but I still don’t feel like he gets it. I don’t know, I need to hear his side. I don’t think I can forgive him or even be friends anymore if I can’t get that.” 

Talia reiterates, “You need to feel that he understands you before you can truly accept his apology. That he means it.”

“Right.” 

“With the way that you grew up and the things you experienced at a young age, you’ve been conditioned to please people—to not think of yourself, but to be hyper-vigilant of the people and situations around yourself and attune to them, regardless of your own feelings—for safety. This is a trauma response. So for you with your complex PTSD, going into this conversation, I think it’s important to share your feelings very clearly, right at the very beginning of the conversation—before anything is able to trigger you.” 

Share his feelings? Niki shrinks a little at the thought. He’s only just gotten used to talking about them in here! Going into a real life conversation with his feelings as the subject seems weak and—and—ridiculous. 

 

But what she’s saying about his ‘pleasing’ people… He never thought about ‘people-pleasing’ like this before: regularly dissociating just to stay safe. Not to be popular, not to make a bunch of friends or have a good social reputation. Just to be fucking safe—

He does that all the time! In the middle of conversations, in uncomfortable social settings, with authority figures, in confrontations, if the emotions get too heavy… He completely goes into autopilot. His brain goes quiet and steps aside so that he can do not what he wants to do, but what he believes he should do in the situation, feelings aside. 

And often, what he should do, what gives that safe feeling, ends up being sex because that's the learned behavior.

 

Why has he never thought of it this way before? 

All this time thinking he was just some weird breed of incorrigible slut…

But it makes perfect sense now under the lens of COCSA and C-PTSD, and all of a sudden it doesn’t feel as damning. 

 

Talia’s voice regains his attention. “The only way to know for sure that your feelings can be understood by another person,” she's telling him, “is if you clearly state them. In as much detail as you feel comfortable with. If you are able to verbalize your feelings, and he is still unable to understand them or make you feel heard, then you should take a step back from the relationship for the sake of your mental health."

At that, Niki takes pause. The therapist has never given him such straight-forward advice before. 

 

He is not looking forward to detailing his feelings for the other boy, but he trusts her. The logic makes sense; he can actually follow in the wake of his emotions for once and recognize that, yes: he needs this in order to really be okay. 

 

 

---

The following Tuesday, Niki hops off the student bus at 4 o’clock sharp. He meant to arrive at the meeting point a little earlier, but the bus was late. He picks up the pace, briskly walking the final block to the pavilion where he asked Sunoo to meet him. It’s April now, warm and sunny. The light jacket he put on before leaving his dorm feels like too much. He’ll take it off when he sits down. 

When he rounds the corner of the restaurant, he finds Sunoo already sitting at one of the pavilion tables in between buildings. The boy's black hair swishes over pale skin, turning to greet him with a wave. 

“Hey,” Niki says, too quiet to be heard from this far away. He returns the wave. Instead of ignoring the way his heart clamors at the sight of the other boy, Niki acknowledges his nerves for once. Of course he’s scared. He’s going to embarrass himself in about one minute—telling Sunoo his feelings—and then their friendship might be over. Oh geez…okay… 

“It’s so nice out!” Sunoo calls cheerfully as Niki gets close to the little table. He smiles up at Niki with his lips closed, but he looks nervous too. It’s been almost six months since everything transpired and this is the first time they’ve spoken alone in ages. 

“Yeah, I’m hot.” Niki peels himself out of the spring jacket and sets it down on the table before tucking a leg under himself to sit. 

 

For a moment, the two of them sit in silence. It’s painfully obvious that the conversation to be had is a big one just by the tense curve of Sunoo’s shoulders beneath that nervous smile, or by the way Niki can only look at him for a second or two at a time. 

Once, they could lounge around and talk without reservation, like brothers. Just remembering how nice it was to finally find that after so many years of struggling with friendship as a concept makes Niki flush with sorrow.

 

Talia told him to start right away. He takes a shuddery breath. “Thanks for meeting me. I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been going to therapy,” he announces quickly. “It’s…helping, I think.” 

Sunoo’s eyebrows raise. “Wow. Niki, that’s…great. I didn’t know—”

Of course he didn’t know. Niki didn’t tell him. And normally, at the interruption, Niki would have abandoned speaking altogether, but Talia prepped him for this. He steels himself against the embarrassment and charges on, saying, “Everything that happened with Beta Theta Phi— I’ve been handling it and I’ve been trying to be normal because I—I— don’t think that you meant to…do anything. But I am hurt.” 

Sunoo begins to say, “I’m sorry,” but Niki won’t hear it yet. 

“I’m mad at you,” he states. “For watching the video. The way you told me about it was…” His eyes go blank, returning to that moment to feel all over again just how devastating it was learning that even if he couldn’t remember, other people would. "The way you brought it up out of nowhere after disappearing on me...it was horrendous. It’s like you don’t even think about my feelings at all. That’s how it feels to me sometimes.” 

This time, when Niki pauses to take a breath and recenter himself, Sunoo does not try to interrupt. 

“When we were pledging, all I thought about was you. And then everything happened and it felt like you forgot I existed. Were you mad at me? What happened? I—I needed you and you were nowhere to be found. You know that if you were in trouble I would have been there—” Niki has to fight the urge to point an accusing finger at Sunoo. He feels his face twist into a snarl as the tears come. Sunoo is looking at him with wide, sad eyes that make Niki cringe. “And then afterwards…” He brushes the tears from his cheeks. “I mean, thank you, for bringing me back to my room. If you didn’t do that, I don’t know what would have happened. I might be dead on the sidewalk. Seriously.” 

Fuck … He never thought about that before this very moment. Those guys didn’t give a shit about him. They didn’t give a shit about Sunoo either. Suddenly, he’s picturing Heeseung sending him off with Sunoo when they were done with him, looking smug as fuck to have Niki wearing his jacket like a trophy. How uncomfortable, and confused Sunoo must have been— 

Wait! No. Before he can empathize, he has to fully express himself or he won't end up doing it at all. 

He has to ask, “Did I throw up?” 

“Uh– y-yeah,” Sunoo stammers in return. "You couldn't stay conscious for more than, like 20 seconds." 

The memory of laying in his own vomit in the bathtub after the fact, before they gave him to Sunoo, returns to mind. “Was I bleeding?” 

“No. I don't…I don't think so. I didn't see—” 

“I had a staple in my tongue. I wasn't bleeding?” Niki demands. 

 

The other boy's eyes are saucers. He puts a trembling hand over his mouth and goes pale as a sheet, but he doesn't respond. 

 

Maybe Niki wasn't bleeding anymore by then. He doesn't remember what happened or how long they kept him upstairs afterward. They didn't send him outside slathered in cum and blood. They made him take a shower—that much he’s pieced together at least, so maybe Sunoo really didn't know how hurt he was. 

But he's still angry and so, so hurt. He's still hurt right now. “Did you know what they were going to do?” 

At last, Sunoo begins to cry and frankly Niki is surprised he hadn't started before now. He's shaking his head frantically, lips pinched shut in a thin line as the first pair of tears roll down his cheeks. 

“No?” 

“I—” When Sunoo begins to speak, his voice is so small that he has to clear his throat and try again. “ I knew they spiked the punch, but—” His hands rush up to cover his face as he dissolves into breathy sobs. “I thought you could handle it!"

I did handle it, Niki wants to argue defensively. I didn't die. I didn't fucking kill myself. But the thought doesn't feel any better and Sunoo just keeps barrelling on,

"I was wrong. I was a selfish, stupid bitch. I'm so sorry! I thought it was the same as always—with you drinking my drinks.” 

Niki eyes him coldly. There's rage in his chest. There's sorrow in his guts swirling and he's starting to feel nauseous, but he's also coming to the realization that Sunoo giving him some of his drink wasn't all that happened. He's remembering Heeseung handing him his cup directly. 

 

All at once, he's certain that they drugged him specifically…and the addition of Sunoo’s liquor didn't help. 

 

“It's not entirely your fault,” he mutters after a moment of thought. 

Sunoo is still blubbering into his hands. When his cries only get harder, Niki gets the urge to reach out and grab one of his hands. He grasps onto his wrist first and gently pulls the arm away from Sunoo's face to make the other boy look at him. When tear blurred eyes finally meet his gaze, Niki repeats himself, 

“It's not entirely your fault. They drugged me on purpose.” For the first time since all of this began, that statement does not feel like an exaggeration or a lie. It's the truth. That's what happened.  

Now Niki wants to let it go. He would love to be able to move forward without feeling this betrayed, so he has to ask one more time even if it feels dumb. “And you really didn’t know they were going to do that to me? No one said anything to you about planning it or…?”

“No,” Sunoo all but vows, his eyes wide, voice reverent and slow like he’s truly desperate for Niki’s acceptance. “I swear to God, I didn’t know. I’m so dumb, I genuinely didn’t realize until days later—” His voice breaks, and suddenly he looks even more apologetic somehow. “B-but I did see you with them. Just for a second!” Sunoo jumps to clarify. It looks like he’s torturing himself by the admission but he does manage to get it out. “Jay made it seem like it was c-consensual.”

Niki turns to look away. He drops Sunoo’s hand, but he can still see that beat red face out of the corner of his eye.

He’s clearly sorry and ashamed, but does he understand?  

 

Talia said that the only way he can expect others to truly understand, is to explain it to them. “In as much detail as you feel comfortable with,” she said. 

 

He grinds his teeth. There is a seagull flapping on the ground near a discarded bag of potato chips on the other side of the pavilion. He watches it struggle as he fights his own urge to just clam up and deal with this on his own. “Sunoo, can you understand that I don’t remember what happened and I feel like… I feel like it was my fault? Especially because you have slut shamed me in the past, whether you meant to or not. And then you telling me that it looked consensual—” He chokes on his spit. 

“Niki…” The other boy sounds stunned.

“How am I supposed to feel? Like what am I supposed to think about myself if even my best friend thought I was asking for it? You act like nothing happened to me, and then you tell me to press charges? What the fuck?” 

 

The words hang between them for a long moment before Sunoo finally moves from his frozen state, squirming in his seat in search of Niki’s gaze. 

 

When he has it at last, he says, “I didn’t know you thought it was your fault. I had no idea that I made you feel that way. I’m so sorry, Niki. I completely fucked up. And with the video—” Sunoo visibly cringes. “I only told you about it to try and explain that it didn’t look consensual. I was a complete idiot for ever thinking that, and a terrible friend! And I never meant to—to—slut shame you. Oh my god. I’m so sorry! I was just naive and uncomfortable about things that you seemed so comfortable with. It made me feel like a little kid! It felt easier to act like I didn’t like that kind of stuff than to admit over and over that I have no experience.” 

Sunoo pauses to take a long breath. The seagull makes a loud squawk and flies near their table and it goes away, carrying the bag of chips with it. 

Slender fingers creep across the table to find Niki’s hand this time. “If I made it harder for you to… believe yourself…or try to get justice,” Sunoo practically whispers, “ I’m never going to forgive myself, honestly. I am so sorry. Please tell me how I can make it up to you. I’ve been trying for months, I just don’t know how. I’ve been dying to report them but I didn’t want to overstep.” 

Niki’s heart is slamming in his chest at just the mention of reporting Beta Theta Phi for what they did to him. A few months ago, he would have absolutely refused. Now he’s a little more open to the idea, but it’s still complicated. They’ll say that he wanted it. They’ll call him a slut in front of some disciplinary panel at the college and then the videos will end up everywhere.

No matter how much he tells himself he was raped, he can still hear arguments for the contrary. 

“I know I said it before, but obviously I did a terrible job of explaining myself,” Sunoo is mumbling bitterly, looking down at the pavilion table between them as he muses aloud. “It was not your fault. Those guys have a huge folder of pictures and videos from all of the Beta Theta Phi branches around the country. They knew exactly what they were doing. I was the clueless one, and if you hadn’t been so worried about me , you would have seen it coming too, I bet. It’s all my fault. And Heeseung and them… They’re terrible people. I can’t believe I ever had a crush on him. You know they took my phone and my laptop when I left? I never got them back. And Jay beat Jake up.”

Wait. “What?” When?! Niki is shocked to hear that. He never noticed any signs of it on Jake, but then again, Niki was so lost in own world after what happened that monitoring Jake and Sunoo was the last thing on his mind. The miserable feeling of separation that Niki has been carrying around for months begins to shift into imminency and anger as he asks for all the details he never got about how Sunoo and Jake left the fraternity and the details of that folder. 

 

When his questions have been answered, Niki frowns in thought. “Do you still have access to it? I think I want to see it,” he asks.

Sunoo gapes at him.

Of course it would be disturbing to watch, but maybe if he saw it he would be able to believe Sunoo’s eventual realization instead of his initial judgment. 

But unfortunately, since leaving the fraternity, Sunoo and Jake no longer have access to the files. “I would have saved them if I had known.” Sunoo's cheeks are pink. “I just thought—”

“No it’s okay. I guess I’m glad you didn’t.” 

“I'm glad you're here even if you are useless,” Ellen was saying. The entire expanse of pale skin on her face was glistening with tears like a sheet. She was a moon hovering just inches above Niki’s face in the darkness of her bedroom. 

She was pressing her lips against his again and again—a thousand slow, chaste kisses—as she laid flat on top of him—pressing Niki down on his back in the sheets like a pancake. 

 

He would have apologized again and again too, each in time with those broken kisses if he thought it mattered. He had just sat there waiting upstairs while it happened. No words could ever change that. Either Ellen would choose to hate him or she would choose to move onward. 

Maybe he should have encouraged her to go to the police again right then and there. Was that the one moment she was vulnerable enough to agree? That could have been his only opportunity to save her life. But he had fallen into the trap of believing her after so many assurances that, “the police can’t do anything,” and “my mom doesn’t even believe me. Why would they?” “He’ll just talk his way out of it,” she always said, and Niki eventually just accepted her fears as the truth. 

Maybe deep down, he had the subconscious fear that she could be blamed for it somehow if they pressed the issue. Ellen’s own mother had called her a slut once. 

 

But how could she ever be to blame in that situation? That asshole was an adult. She was a teenager. She was his wife's daughter. It shouldn’t have mattered if she showed up naked in his bed with her legs spread and a smile, that man had a responsibility to not fucking rape her. 

And how could Niki ever be blamed? He was drugged. He was four! How can the victim ever be at fault? 

 

Sunoo apologizes ten or twelve times more before the conversation in the pavilion ends, but it's the softly spoken, “I've really missed you, Niki,” that finally touches Niki’s wounded heart. 

“I missed you too. I missed being able to actually talk to you.” Looking at Sunoo right now, he sees the assurance that he didn’t get before. The lack of judgment. The unwavering support, no explanation needed.

Maybe he will report those assholes to the school somehow, even without evidence. A little bit of the tension melts out of Niki’s spine. 

 

As they rise to get ice cream from the shop next door, Sunoo shoots him a wry smile over his shoulder. “I think this is the most you've ever talked to me, actually. I was starting to think you didn’t have feelings." 

“Yeah, well…” 

Sunoo’s bright laugh cuts him off. “Puh-leeeeez don’t stop! I really like it.”  

 

Niki smiles back at him. He feels exhausted but refreshed at the same time, and for the first time in a long time, he's able to laugh about something without tasting that bitter twinge in his mouth. 

---

Usually Ellen chose to be angry, not sad. But when she was sad, it was a big sad: a gut-wrenching, soul-quaking, hurt kind of sad that made the ground crumble beneath them, as though nothing would ever be okay again. Niki would always get still and quiet beside her in the midst of that storm because he understood that language. It was just a wake to ride in, and he knew there was no responding to that kind of pain in words. 

It made Niki feel like he wasn’t okay either. He just didn’t know how to say so. 

When she came up to the surface and they could start making half-jokes again, he offered, “You want me to cut his dick off for you? I could do it, you know.” 

Her face was puffy from sobbing—splotchy red to match her hair. She wiped her nose on the side of her hand. “No. I don't want you to go to jail.” 

“Why?” he laughed wryly. 

“Go to college.” 

That was out of left fucking field. Niki propped himself up on one elbow in the mattress to fix Ellen with an annoyed look of question. “Why? It'll just be a bunch of rich kids who wanna play stupid games and make each other feel big.” He’d often thought that prison would suit him better than college. He felt like he might fit in better there. “And snotty professors. And nepotism.” 

“They call it networking, I think.” She finally smirked beneath those puffy red eyes. “Nah. Go take some writing classes. I want you to tell people stories. Make them feel what it feels like. People don't understand.” 

 

 

 

 

the end

Notes:

I didn't beta read this so...I am SORRY if there are a lot of typos or bits that don't make sense. This was fucking hard for me to write, that's why it took forever.

LISTEN !!! IF you are struggling with long held negative beliefs or shitty patterns, you need to try EMDR as a therapy option. 10/10 recommend. Also it's not your fault <3

xoxoxo Addy

Notes:

If you read this far, let me know what you're thinking and feeling. Nothing encourages me to write a new chapter like lots of comments ;)