It happens in an instant and yet everything seems to stretch out interminably.

One moment I'm gazing at him, his ethereal face is smiling at me, and the next I'm urging him to look at the road.

The smiles on our faces die out.

It's too late.

A taxi is rushing towards us, driving on the wrong side. He swerves the car to the right to avoid collision and heads towards the divider railing. The taxi too swerves to its  right. 

He corrects course, but it's too late.

He slams on the brakes and the car makes a dying screech. Something breaks.

He is thrown forward. There's no seat belt to slow him down as his face smashes against the steering wheel and bends like a half-formed clay mask. 

His face scrunches, his jawline contorts, his teeth are knocked out. His eyes protrude inhumanly.

Blood spurts.

It feels like I can reach out and hold his face but my hands move slowly through the air.

I hear my own ribs snap like dry twigs against the impact of the seat belt. A shooting pain rises in my chest when the seat belt pushes me back.

The world spins outside the windshield.

 Once.

Twice.

He is still smiling at me, his face turned at an awkward angle from the neck, his lips cut and bloody. 

Suddenly, the car flips over the railing and slams into a truck on the opposite side of road.

 A deathly silence descends.

 Time freezes. 

Pieces of glass and tissue and teeth stay suspended mid-air, unmoving. 

Through the pain, I'm looking at his once-beautiful face, the face fell I in love with, now a chaos of blood, distended tissue, and shards of bone and broken teeth.

I reach out for his face. 

It takes forever. 

And then a disquieting crunch fills the air. Metal against metal, bone against bone, bone against flesh, flesh against metal. I'm thrown backward and forward. 

The burning smell of rubber engulfs us.

 Orange-red flames lick everything up. I try opening my eyes, now flooded with blood rom my forehead. He's being thrown like a rag doll inside the roll cage of the car. His eyes are open and he's looking at me. 

I look for signs of him but can only see my own gory reflection staring back. There's no trace of life in those eyes. 

But he has a smile on his face. 

A cold,  dead smile. 

A stray piece of metal pierces through my shoulder blade like a hot axe through butter and pins me to the seat.

The car flips again and he's thrown out of the windshield. I give his my battered hand but he's out of sight. 

The car slams to the ground again. 

I snap out of the seat belt and slam against the roof of the car. 

I start to lose consciousness. I shout his name but only a whimper escapes my lips. 

Taehyung . . .