(for soopremo) Undimmed By Time, Unbound By Death
For: soopremo
Title: Undimmed By Time, Unbound By Death
Genre: Angst, Drama
Rating: NC-17
Side-Pairing: Baeksoo
Warnings: character death, violence, abuse of psychedelic drugs
Length: 7,000 words
Summary: And he is angry and hollow and won’t be silenced.
"Oh God, I wish you were not on this earth, but entirely within me, or rather that I were not on this earth, but entirely within you; I feel there is one too many of us; the separation into two people is unbearable."
- Franz Kafka, from Letters to Felice
DON’T LET THEM LIE TO YOU
He is two miles down Seoul Ring Expressway, cigarette between his lips, fingers trembling against the wheel. There is a bag on the front passenger seat. He doesn’t know what’s inside the bag.
He doesn’t know anything. Head wiped clean. He is on the run. A fugitive with an AKB in his trunk.
That’s funny.
Tell me about it!
A map is fanned out on the dashboard. The sun is making it hard for him to see anything besides vague red lines and yellow. He had put a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee on the map earlier when he had gotten the car downtown from a guy named Gook Yung.
Nice guy. They all are.
A never ending road stretches for miles down the horizon. There is morning fog everywhere. The sun feels cold on his skin. There are breadcrumbs on his dark blue pants and sticking to his shoulder pads like dandruff.
Kyungsoo pulls over and stops the engine.
He produces carcinogenic grease in form of two 200mg bullet pills from his jacket pocket and swallows them dry.
He glued a Polaroid photograph to the rear window with duct tape earlier. He yanks the photo off and holds it up against the light falling inside the car. The image shows a bed and half a face oversaturated by the camera flashlight. Behind the Polaroid photograph, written in red marker, he reads, “Don’t Listen to Their Lies.”
**
In his dream, Kai lights a cigarette and swallows galled clouds of smoke.
“Kai is Jongin.”
**
There is this theory that reality is divided in multiple layers. There are no parallel dimensions, just timelines that don’t necessarily have to go in the same direction. Death is a universal goal to each of us. It’s the end of our performance. We take a bow and go out with a bang. But that’s not what we are here for in the end.
We fade in and out.
The thing about dreams is that the human mind is perpetually refuting itself while trying to maintain the thin line separating fiction from reality. The subconscious is under constant stress, trying to preserve memory, sanity.
Try seeing it this way: It’s more of a gradual amalgamation:
Your brain attempts to connect A and B and because it can’t, you wake up. The grand apex. The joke.
There is a scream.
The first thing he sees is blood polling at the side of his head. It stings when Kyungsoo takes a deep breath and quickly exhales.
He staggers on his feet but doesn’t quite manage to stand upright. His kneecaps hurt.
Kyungsoo stumbles over cut up cushions and torn apart bed sheets. The hotel bed was stripped off everything. A man’s body is lying on the carpeted floor.
Dread builds in his stomach as suddenly the ground caves in on itself and Kyungsoo falls. He sees someone leaning over the balcony railing, falling too, before the ground engulfs him completely.
**
Kyungsoo’s father had been a proud man. He had owned a small company that sold and bought second hand cars. Business had gone steady at the beginning but his father eventually encountered financial problems post economic slump, which forced him to sell the company and their three story house and most of the comfort middle-class families were used to indulge in. While Kyungsoo’s mother hadn’t minded much at the beginning, too much in love to throw the towel still, after his father instead of looking for a new job began to attempt finding a semblance of his life post eviction at the bottom of beer bottles, their financial situation deteriorated and a divorce was inevitable.
Twitching hands, roped throat, mangled cries:
His father’s death had been both expected and dreaded and while his mother had spent many nights at her husband’s side, watching the man she’d chosen to marry gradually crumble and leave behind but markings of a distraught wreck losing himself to the semantics of basic insanity, she hadn’t dared to cry at the funeral.
What lingered after his father were not the bills nor the repeated image of a hanged man but the most comical fact death was able to convey: despite it all Kyungsoo was still living on.
Kyungsoo’s instinctual need for distance and quiet are blamed on traumatizing events that occurred during his late childhood and following puberty. After the third psychologist he is sent to, prescribes him psychological emaciation in form of 200milligram-sized blue Xanax pills he is supposed to swallow diligently every morning and every night, Kyungsoo begins to believe this isn’t clinical depression but pharmaceutical companies trying to test psychedelic drugs on him instead of on tormented Chihuahuas.
Kyungsoo isn’t suicidal or sad, he just is there, a perceptive question mark.
This is not understood. But people fail to understand in turn that Kyungsoo has never wanted to be understood.
**
Kyungsoo is jolted awake by the cold. He slips inside his pair of jeans and lurches over to the open window, mind still stuffed with sleep. Outside, he watches his neighbor walk her dog, streets congested with morning mist. He will have to wait for it to settle down, he doesn't know Geoje that well yet.
He doesn't like the suburbs, has always preferred the city and the cement canopy hanging over his head like a ubiquitous reminder that he sold his soul to Samsung and fast food restaurants. He doesn't remember why he gave his apartment in the city up. Kyungsoo leans over the windowsill, hands gripping the plastic front, and sticks his head outside. His neighbor has always had the quite admiring morning routine that begins with her rice cooker rattling so loudly around 4 AM that sometimes when Kyungsoo can’t sleep, he hears it banging against the wall.
Not many are up yet, foggy Sunday weather not exactly welcoming either, but Kyungsoo makes out few joggers, and as always old lady Goh is watering her tulips and roses across the street, his neighbor, and a boy clothed in flannel pajamas covered in jarring blue cumulus clouds. And the boy looks so painfully out of place, Kyungsoo almost laughs.
As the morning flashes by in rippled lines, without Kyungsoo noticing, the past runs away from tomorrow, dissipates, and traces the sun peeking through thick lashes of fog.
The boy in the blue pajamas articulates wildly with his arms and screams, “Good morning, Kyungsoo!”
Everywhere are echoes.
As Kyungsoo closes the window, rain pelts against the window pane.
**
There is a small police precinct in Okpo Il Dong, tucked away somewhere in the neighborhood. Kyungsoo misses Seoul.
He is introduced to a series of people and afterwards Kyungsoo only but remembers a smear of faces blurred out by his consciousness who is not used to the sudden influx of information.
Officer Kwon, who says he’s the only authority person Kyungsoo is taking orders from while on duty, is an old, bald man who wears his badge like it’s a rope around his neck.
“Your medical evaluation states you have had minor problems with remembering things. That’s why you were transferred. Needed rest,” Officer Kwon says, and his uniform makes him appear older than he really is. “Not sure if I can use someone like you here. I don’t know why everytime something goes sour downtown they push it to us. I am tired of being fed trash.” Perspiration clings to the inner side of his hands, and Kyungsoo feels dizzy.
“Look kid, I don’t care what kind of melodramatic bullshit is affecting your brain. If you mess up here, I will feed your ass to the sharks. You will be accounted for your actions, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Kyungsoo sounds more confident than he truly feels.
“You will be paired up with an officer that knows his way around here. Okpo Il is fun sized. Not much goes on here. But I don’t want you running around without someone keeping an eye on you.” Kyungsoo nods.
“I’ll contact the station,” Officer Kwon mumbles and then he is out the door.
One of the people at the station Kyungsoo is introduced to is Baekhyun who shows up at work with purple hair. But Officer Kwon does not seem to mind so Kyungsoo doesn’t either.
The station is smaller than the one he worked at in Seoul. There are about ten police officers present, a number that seems almost laughable compared to what he was used to from the big city. He is not given his own desk but is allotted a partner. His babysitter for the first week, as Officer Kwon had promised.
Baekhyun is disorganized and careless and seems to care little for his reputation. “Geoje is too small for me to give a damn about what happens to it. Quite frankly no one here cares all that much. You shouldn’t ether.”
They work in silence. Kyungsoo is given most paperwork and as he peruses them he notices that most date back to last year.
It is Baekhyun who strikes up conversation first when he returns after having excused himself an hour ago.
"You look like you come from the city. Where are you from?"
"Seoul.” There is ink on Kyungsoo’s fingertips and his neck feels stiff.
"Seoul, huh? The only city boy I've talked to besides you is Chanyeol. Chanyeol is the grocery market cop,” Baekhyun says, while closing the door behind him. Kyungsoo looks at him funny.
“Local watch dog without a badge,” Baekhyun elaborates and shrugs his coat off of his shoulders. He smells like cigarettes. “My girlfriend is always making fun of him.”
Kyungsoo doesn’t know what he is supposed to do so he squirms uncomfortably in his seat and hopes for an alien invasion or a natural disaster so he can put today behind him and burn in the zealous flames of hell in peace.
“Baekhyun, you said you know everyone around here, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I’ve been running into this guy as of the late. He said his name is Kai. Ever heard of him?”
“Kai…,” Baekhyun seems genuinely intrigued for a moment but then slowly shakes his hand. “No, never heard of him,” he says. “Maybe he moved to Geoje recently, too, like you.”
“Yeah,” Kyungsoo mumbles after a while. “Thanks Baekhyun.”
“That’s what I am here for, bud.”
It is only later that Kyungsoo realizes the boy in the blue pajamas never told him his name.
**
As his first week in Geoje eventually passes by without greater incidents Kyungsoo begins to think that the boy in the blue pajamas might have been a stress induced hallucination caused by Officer Kwon’s strongly worded welcome. He conducts research online and his thesis is supported by a number of threads he finds on several forums about mental health. He also skims through the Wikipedia article on hallucinations and concludes that he has to learn to handle stressful situations better.
He also finds Baekhyun more bearable. He is overly talkative and slacks off most of the time but is not exactly bad company.
“It’s been raining for days,” Baekhyun mumbles while drawing the blinds.
“I forgot to close my window and woke up thinking I was drowning. When I was younger my grandfather owned a boat. He’d take me fishing every weekend. It was extremely traumatizing.”
“Have you ever been to an engagement party before,” Baekhyun asks while watching Kyungsoo type.
“My best friend getting married next Wednesday.” Baekhyun, Kyungsoo notices, has the habit of asking questions he doesn’t really want answers to. “I don’t want to go alone.”
“I thought you had a girlfriend.”
“We broke up.”
“Why?” Kyungsoo asks, not exactly interested in knowing more.
“Because I like boys.” Baekhyun looks like he is expecting Kyungsoo to bolt out the door.
“Then ask a boy to go with you.”
“That’s what I’m doing. I’m asking you.”
Kyungsoo looks at Baekhyun. “Okay, let’s say I go with you. Why are you making such a big deal out of this? You said the guy is your best friend.”
Baekhyun is quiet for a long time. Kyungsoo resumes typing until Baekhyun says, “I have been in love with him for the past twelve years.”
“Your life is a mess.”
Baekhyun laughs.
“Okay,” Kyungsoo says. “I’ll go.”
**
Sometimes Kyungsoo sits in the kitchen, holding the manila envelopes in his hands, and wonders what would happen if he just opened them.
**
The engagement party is held in the only local four stars hotel with an impeccable view of the sea and Geoje’s skyline.
Baekhyun proves to be even more pleasant company outside the station as he never allows Kyungsoo to keep to himself and is always engaging him in conversation with either him or other guests Baekhyun is familiar with. Baekhyun fills the gaps in with words Kyungsoo leaves behind. Kyungsoo eyes the swaying surge of people, glimmering and glistering under the large embellished chandelier hanging from the golden celling.
Kyungsoo is introduced to Chanyeol and his wife after champagne is served and the music picks on speed. It’s abnormally nice, being part of a large crowd. He forgets about Kai and the carcinogenic pills he has to take daily.
“Chanyeol, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun says. “Kyungsoo, Chanyeol.” Chanyeol has the whitest set of teeth Kyungsoo’s ever seen.
“Nice to finally meet you, man. Baekhyun’s been talking about you a lot, lately,” Chanyeol says. And he has a very boisterous voice. Makes sense seen as he’s Baekhyun’s best friend. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo shake hands.
“I hope he’s only said good things.”
“Only good things,” Baekhyun promises.
“Well, we are talking about Baekhyun here.” Chanyeol laughs. “He’s been born to talk shit.” Kyungsoo concurs wholeheartedly and Baekhyun shrieks in disbelief.
The rest of the night passes by without greater incidents. Chanyeol is charming and completely in love with his fiancée. Kyungsoo is surprised to catch sight of genuine content on Baekhyun’s face while he exchanges a few words with her.
“She’s nice and pretty and right for Chanyeol,” Baekhyun explains when he catches Kyungsoo watching him.
“I can’t… I’m not like her. And that’s fine. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am not comparing myself to her. I’m just stating the obvious. Besides, it’s not like I can change the situation anyway. So I might make the best of it, right?”
“Right,” Kyungsoo agrees.
“Everyone at one point in their lives has an unrequired crush. Some just give up faster than others,” Baekhyun says.
“That’s a nice way of putting it.”
Baekhyun beams. “I should become a poet or something. I know my way around with words.” He wiggles his fingers dramatically as if to make a point.
“I’m glad it’s her,” he says. “I’m glad he fell in love with her.” But Baekhyun doesn’t really look like he means what he is saying. It’s funny, how we decorate heartbreaks.
Kyungsoo looks over at the two dancing and looking laughing and leaning against another.
“They are the type of couple who never cheat on another or fight,” Baekhyun laughs. “So annoying.”
**
The nights in Geoje is always bigger than what he remembers them to being in Seoul. Skies abide by no limit here. So he looks up in awe, for a moment, and nothing is ever still, not even the stars hanging over his head. The jacket he is wearing it too thin, and so the cold creeps and is a constant during his walk back home. He is not expecting Kai, but yet he is. He always is. Kai is sitting on a swing wearing his blue pajama, shoes covered in sand, like everything else in Geoje. He looks sad, or maybe confused. It’s too dark to place feelings in meaningful order.
Kai’s hair is wild, tousled by the late noon breeze. He looks like one of the models inside the magazines Baekhyun likes to read during coffee breaks. It’s not meant as a compliment.
Kai hasn’t noticed him yet. Still too preoccupied by catching his shadow, sharing secrets with ghosts. Kyungsoo wouldn’t be all too surprised. He does it too.
He sneaks up on Kai from behind, and pushes him hard. The swing creaks and Kai yelps.
“Surprise!” Kai reddens and turns around to face Kyungsoo.
“What are you doing here all alone?”
“I was… thinking,” Kai says.
“You look like you are always thinking.”
Kai laughs and says, “Nice suit.”
“I was someone’s boyfriend tonight.”
He nods, and looks down at his feet. “Did you have fun?”
Kyungsoo contemplates his answer for a moment, whenever he should be honest or not, and then says, “Yeah. It was nice.”
They walk in silence. It gives him to think. Kyungsoo is always fleeing, always tripping over bodies. And Kai, he figures, is not different. He wonders why he has taken to like Kai. He barely knows him. Maybe there is no reason behind it, no reason needed.
"Have you ever felt like dying? Like killing yourself," Kai asks when they reach his neighborhood.
"To kill not yourself for the sake of ending your psychological decomposition, but to kill this ugly thing inside of yourself. That thing that looks back at you in the mirror. The thing that sleeps in your bed and wears your clothes. The thing everyone loves. Because they can’t difference the real you from the phony you. And it’s not their fault. They just don’t love you enough to take a closer look." The streetlamp flickers, needs to be fixed, and instead of shimmery dots, crimped light debris press against gravity and fall against Kai’s profile. The light makes him look like a paper cut-out.
Unmoving.
Dead.
"Because sometimes when you are lying in bed, it breathes down your neck. And it feels like dying. So you tell yourself 'I'll kill myself before this thing can do it,' but in truth you are the thing.” Kai smiles.
"In truth, there is no one else but you."
Kai says:
"You know what your problem is?"
Kyungsoo is both mentally and physically fatigued.
"Amuse me,” he says while unlocking the door to his tenement.
"You are running away from nothing.” Kai’s eyes are wide. He looks hysterical.
“Your head doesn't let you. And I mean, I wouldn’t care if at least you were running away from something, from someone. But nothing?
"Vague memories are still memories, Kyungsoo."
Kyungsoo looks at Kai for a moment, hand gripping the door handle, skin pressing against cold metal, and it’s starting to hurt but Kyungsoo feels as if he’s gone through this before. And it’s exhausting because Kai always speaks in riddles, always spits and sneers out elegies about how inane Kyungsoo’s behavior is and Kyungsoo wants him to stop.
Before he lurches the stairs to his apartment up he says, “You are a nobody. I don’t need psychotherapeutic advice from a narcissistic wreck like you.”
And before Kai can respond, Kyungsoo has closed the door and is running up the stairs.
Later he looks outside the window but Kai is gone.
**
His reflection says, I am slowly dying from the inside out. It says, don’t believe them, they are not here to help you.
He can’t move on. Stuck in Limbo.
**
“I’m sorry, Do-ssi. I forgot to get sugar yesterday.”
The girl that lives next to him is pretty. She has long hair and big eyes. Kyungsoo hands her a cup with sugar while smiling. “Don’t worry too much. It’s okay,” he laughs.
“That’s what neighbors are for.”
“You are an angel,” she says. Kai is standing behind her. He is wearing a black tee.
Kai looks at his neighbor funnily and Kyungsoo stops smiling. Instead he looks down for a moment, wondering why he feels guilty all of the sudden. Then it’s gone and he is smiling at his neighbor again.
“I have to,” Kyungsoo starts. “Oh yes of course. Thank you once again for the sugar. See you around, Do-ssi!” She waves at him and on her way back to her apartment she ignores Kai completely. Eventually she disappears and Kai steps forward and pushes Kyungsoo back inside and closes the door behind him.
Kai is impatient. He licks into Kyungsoo’s mouth while fumbling with his belt, hands everywhere and nowhere. As if there isn’t enough time. They don’t come far, stuck in the living room, Kyungsoo’s back arched against the wooden floor while Kai’s hand slips down Kyungsoo’s jeans.
Kyungsoo hisses through clenched teeth when Kai takes his cock in his hand and squeezes, thumb pressing under the head. He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed that he is already painfully hard. Kai pumps slowly, free hand pushing against Kyungsoo’s stomach to keep him from thrusting into his palm.
Stale air, palpable commotion; he can feel himself disintegrating into nothing.
Sex with Kai hurts.
Kai thrusts too fast, too deep, and when he licks into Kyungsoo’s mouth it feels like he is trying to eat him whole. Kyungsoo can’t get enough.
It’s obscene, the way Kai grunts above him, presses his fingers into Kyungsoo’s mouth, breaks skin, lost between amplified hysteria and thin threaded insanity. Kai fucks him like he wants his love to break jaws, and fracture bones the same way fists do.
He abhors the stark contrast of perceptions. The kiss he places on Kai’s cheek, teeth scraping against salty skin, tasting for the echoes of past lovers, of memory refuse that is not his own.
He feels childish, like he is twelve again, inside his old worn jumper, holding his mother’s hand, trying to hold not love, but to immortalize the feeling of belonging, of being.
Kyungsoo’s fingers furl around the bed sheets, eyes shut tightly. And for a moment the only thing he sees is darkness.
When he comes and Kai collapses on top of him, Kyungsoo feels nothing.
“I love you,” Kai says.
“You love me in ways hard for me to understand.”
Kai rolls over, chest sinking and rising rapidly.
“But you can’t understand what I feel anyway, can you? So it doesn’t matter.”
Kyungsoo thinks it should matter.
**
Sometimes Kai becomes Jongin.
But Kyungsoo doesn’t know Jongin.
**
It’s raining and Kyungsoo forgot his umbrella at home so he is standing underneath the roof awning of the convenience store down the street. His jacket is drenched. He shivers and sticks his numb fingers inside his jacket pockets.
Kyungsoo is so preoccupied with the rain that it takes him a moment until he notices Kai standing next to him. He looks to his right and Kai is just standing there, doing nothing.
“Remember when we first met?” Kai asks.
“You were wearing that blue pajama,” Kyungsoo says.
“No.”
“No?”
“I was four and you were five and we were both in kindergarten.”
Kyungsoo shakes his head slowly. “No, we met last week for the first time. You were walking down the street at the crack of dawn wearing that obnoxious pajama.”
Kai seems unfazed and continues, “Our parents didn’t like another much so we weren’t allowed to play with each other. I guess my mother knew then that I would fall unfathomably deeply in love with you,” he chuckles and then shrugs the cold off.
“No,” Kyungsoo says.
“And then we got into the same school. And I just couldn’t help loving you more and more.” Kai looks very sad, shoulders slumped, when he says, “We can’t keep pretending.”
“I don’t think I can follow.” Kyungsoo laughs, nervously.
“Kyungsoo you have to eventually wake up,” Kai kneels down before Kyungsoo. And it’s raining so it rains down Kai’s back. Except, not one drop of water hits Kai.
“Please,” Kai says. “Please remember.”
Kyungsoo’s been wondering for the past week why he fell in love with Kai so fast. Because the only thing Kai does is talk nonsense and kiss him. Maybe the core of the problem lies not there.
Kai stands up slowly and looks at Kyungsoo before taking his face in his hands and kissing Kyungsoo. Kai normally doesn’t kiss him so tenderly. He is always biting and bruising like he wants to leave something behind so Kyungsoo can’t forget. But he is not doing that now, he is just kissing him and breathing shallow and fast against his lips.
And then Kai steps back and says, “I’m sorry, Kyungsoo.”
And then Kai is ramming Kyungsoo’s head into the sidewalk. Kyungsoo gasps for air and tries to defend himself but Kai kicks him over and for a moment does nothing, just stares. Kyungsoo breathes in and forgets to scream so Kai swings his fist and breaks Kyungsoo’s nose.
Kyungsoo lurches on all his fours away from Kai towards the street, but Kai grabs his feet and pulls him back.
This time Kyungsoo has time to breathe in and screams. The street is empty and the only thing that buzzes in his ears is his own blood running and sprinting down his veins and his scream resound through gravity.
Everything disintegrates eventually. Reality crumbles, continually, and turns into anything associated with heartbreak, redefined by gunpowder.
He feels the constant pulse under his skin beating in rhythm with his sobs.
Kyungsoo learns then that everyone has their very own private sound of laughter, but crying always sounds the same: hollow and painful.
He watches his own blood run in between the crevices of aged tarmac.
The sirens resound through the late evening like the shrieks of the vultures flying over his head.
He lies there on the sidewalk, fallen, broken and feeling fear creep up on him like darkness.
And then he is gone.
**
Dreams are:
Dried blood under his fingernails, hair tousled by the late afternoon, clothes still damp from the early morning rain. If he looks down the street, past the naked and dead tree branches, through the fog congested city vein, all he sees are mirrored buildings and himself staring back.
His lungs inflate with idle fear of death. His hands quiver, his fingers twitch - if he looks closely he can see that the Him down the street has got no face.
So he reaches for his gun, fumbles with his belt, gropes for the holster, except there is nothing, just wet leather and his mud caked jeans.
Other times dreams are:
A boy with a semi-automatic handgun, a dented Fiat and a bottle of 200 milligram sized red bullet capsules he swallows dry before accelerating one last time. And he is angry and hollow and won’t be silenced. For three seconds, he flies.
The worst dreams are neither the nightmares nor memories, it’s sitting at a cafe bulging with faces and voices and dreams and conversations that go well with his espresso. He sees, and he doesn’t want to: putrescent vestige of human waste no one acknowledges out of fear of catching Death.
And death is everywhere. It drips down his chin everytime he opens his mouth; it’s the dandruff that sticks to his black suit in the summer when he can’t get his fingers to stop trembling; it’s the soap foam that collects in the drain and dries and leaves behind small grey fingerprints inside the pipe walls.
Maybe he’s fallen so quickly in love with Kai because Kai was part of him and part of Jongin. He was never a stranger. Just a washed out copy. Maybe that’s why Kai never felt, never tasted like a stranger.
The thing about dreams, is that you are fully cognizant of the villains, of the shadows, of the ghosts of past lovers you welcome inside your subconscious. There is no one to blame but yourself.
Kyungsoo dreams that Jongin holds his hand in his and laughs and his hair dances with the late noon breeze that forces everything into action.
Jongin says, "Don’t let go. Never let go."
And Kyungsoo doesn't.
Kyungsoo dreams that Jongin looks at him funny. Jongin cowers before the school gate, cigarette between his lips, and he looks at Kyungsoo like he has done something bad. Like he has robbed a bank, killed someone, broken his heart.
"This isn't right. You aren't right."
Kyungsoo dreams that Jongin cries.
"They rejected him," his mother says while Kyungsoo is taking his shoes off.
"The letter came yesterday. He isn't what they are looking for. Jongin said the instructor called him untalented. He hasn't eaten all day."
Kyungsoo nods, looks down at Pororo smiling on his socks until Jongin's mother says, "He is upstairs."
Kyungsoo dreams that Jongin holds his hand.
“Will it hurt,” Kyungsoo asks, voice very quiet.
“Understanding,” Jongin says, “always hurts.”
**
The first thing Kyungsoo sees is Baekhyun's worn-out coat he’s been wearing since the day Kyungsoo arrived in Geoje. White walls is the second thing he sees, followed by white sheets, white bandages and white curtains. He is not inside his old jeans anymore, nor is he wearing his black tee. There is a needle buried in his left arm and he is hooked to a machine.
"The doctor said you’ll survive," Baekhyun says. And to Kyungsoo, Baekhyun looks odd, sounds as if his words carry hidden significance.
"He also said you're..."
Light presses against the windows and lay shattered on the bed sheets, sit heavily on his skin. Baekhyun’s sun soaked hair is undone and the brown hair is growing out.
Baekhyun looks exhausted, face features weathered by worry, maybe anxiety. He looks as if he is looking for words to cushion the shot he is about to deliver.
Lastly he settles on, “Schizophrenic. Jesus fucking Christ.”
"I... didn't know,” Kyungsoo eventually says, “That Jongin died. I mean, I did. I was there when he died. But... It’s hard to explain."
Baekhyun looks at Kyungsoo for a moment, then sits on the plastic stool standing next to the hospital bed.
"Who is Kai exactly?"
"When we were younger... Jongin dreamt of becoming an actor. We were kids, it didn’t exactly mean anything. I wanted to become president at some point during my childhood.” Kyungsoo’s fingers are twitching. “His mother was so vehement on turning Jongin into a celebrity, and it was absolutely disgusting. As long as I’ve known Jongin, Jongin was always attending auditions, special training, dance classes-it was suffocating,” Kyungsoo pauses, looks at Baekhyun as if asking for permission to continue. Baekhyun nods.
“He was rejected. They said he wasn’t what they were looking for. And the instructor called Jongin untalented, a bad dancer. To Jongin, that was the hardest to accept, the hardest pill to swallow. He wanted it so much and-
"That night, he called me. Said he had things to say. I didn’t think much. Jongin always wanted to talk. And then people ask me, did you know Kim Jongin? Like his name is taped to my forehead and tattooed on my tongue.”
Baekhyun looks at him funny. Kyungsoo swallows hard.
“Did I know Jongin? That’s a good question,” he inhales slowly, “But no, I did not,” he exhales quickly. “I did not know Jongin. But I knew Kai and that was as close to the real thing you could get. Kai was everything Jongin was scared of being. He was,” everything Kyungsoo was scared of being. “He was charismatic,” he says instead.
“Kyungsoo, what happened?”
Kyungsoo shrugs. “Jongin committed suicide.”
Because Jongin wanted Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo wanted Kai and Kai wanted Jongin.
It’s not always that complicated. It’s not always about cryptic orders or antiquated theories. Sometimes love is enough.
Kyungsoo wonders if perhaps one day Jongin woke up suddenly and found that his love, as much as it was hopeless and dolorous to heed, like memories of better days, always better days, told himself, “To hell with it. I won’t lament. I will suffer it.”
“I forgot many things after Jongin died. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. They said it messed with my head.” Baekhyun isn’t saying anything anymore, he isn’t even looking at Kyungsoo. He is just looking down at his fingers.
Something settles at the bottom of his stomach his consciousness associates with dread.
“Sometimes bad things happen and you can’t do anything about it.”
Baekhyun is still not looking him in the face.
Kyungsoo pulls at the needle buried in his arm and struggles to stand up. He realizes only after he’s standing, naked feet on cold tiled floor, that he is wearing only a hospital gown and nothing underneath. He opens the small closet next to the hospital bed sees his clothes there, fresh from the laundry, and turns his back to Baekhyun and puts them on.
And then he yanks the hospital gown off of him and crumples the soft plastic and throws it into the trash.
Kyungsoo has problems with tying his shoelaces so Baekhyun kneels down and ties them for him.
“We love the recently deceased.” Kyungsoo frowns and zips his jacket up. “Like it matters. Like our love can bring them back. There is no utility in that. It’s nonsense. The dead do not need the living’s tears. Let them rest. Let them sleep.
Baekhyun hands Kyungsoo his umbrella before he opens the door.
“The dead are better left dead.”
Baekhyun just nods, lips pressed into a line.
“I need to go to Seoul, see Jongin,” Kyungsoo says. “I need to see his grave.”
Baekhyun is sitting behind the steering wheel because Kyungsoo can’t stop crying. They stop by Kyungsoo’s apartment so he can get his things. Kyungsoo only grabs the two manila envelopes and a pair of shoes. Then he closes the door to his apartment, looks over to the door next to his and mouths, “Goodbye”. And then he is running down to meet Baekhyun.
They don’t talk and he doesn’t tell Baekhyun about the gun in his bag.
They reach Busan by the morning and Kyungsoo feels too tired to notice Baekhyun pulling over at motorway station.
“There is a hotel here,” Baekhyun mumbles while unlocking his safety belt and pulling it off. “I can’t keep driving anymore.” Kyungsoo peers at Baekhyun through heavy lashes and just nods.
To Kyungsoo’s surprise the hotel looks decent. A neon board flickers, now and then, and reads OPEN 24HRS in bold neon pink.
The lobby is dimly lit and a man behind the counter is reading a thick book.
Baekhyun coughs, “Uh, we’d like a room for two.”
The hotel receptionist looks up from his book and eyes them both before nodding. There are grease stains on his uniform. He notices Kyungsoo staring and says, “We charge hundred per night. How long are you staying?”
“Just tonight,” Kyungsoo says.
The hotel receptionist looks at them strangely before handing them their room key. “Breakfast is served at 8 AM,” he says. “At 10 AM everything is cleared.” Baekhyun smiles at him but doesn’t really mean it. To Kyungsoo it looks like a lazy pull of lips. “Also we don’t have reception out here.”
“Thank you,” Baekhyun says and then pulls Kyungsoo along with him. The hotel receptionist watches them until they enter the elevator doors close.
“He was kinda weird,” Baekhyun mumbles.
“I’m too tired to care,” Kyungsoo says. His tongue sits heavy in his mouth. Baekhyun snickers.
They don’t bother with their luggage or their clothes and fall asleep almost immediately after lying down on the queen-sized bed still in their jackets.
**
Kyungsoo dreams that Kai is sitting on his old broken couch back in Gangnam-gu, waiting for him.
He is wearing the black tee Kyungsoo bought him to his twentieth birthday and crying so Kyungsoo promises him he’ll make it home.
**
Kyungsoo wakes up in Baekhyun’s arms and he feels completely dead inside.
He closes his eyes and opens them again. He does this a few times before he keeps them shut and realizes that no matter what he does, Jongin’s still dead.
Baekhyun moves in his sleep and sniffles. He talks sometimes, too. Kyungsoo watches him for a while, then he slowly untangles himself from Baekhyun and gets up. His back hurts and his neck is stiff. His left wrist is still bandaged and it itches.
He opens his bag and takes the manila envelopes out and looks at them for a long time, and decides to peek inside. But there is nothing there besides a Polaroid photograph. He turns it over and written in red marker, he reads, “Don’t Listen to Their Lies.”
“What are you doing?” Baekhyun lifts his head and looks at Kyungsoo, face red. “Come back to sleep.” He rubs at his eyes and yawns.
“Baekhyun, have you ever been in Seoul?” Kyungsoo asks.
Baekhyun rolls over and pushes the blanket aside. “No,” he says. “I like the isolation of the countryside.”
Kyungsoo nods then pockets the photo and closes the envelopes again. He stands up and this time takes the gun from his bag. And then he holds the gun to Baekhyun’s head and counts to three and pulls the trigger.
The cartridges are empty. He only hears the gun click. Baekhyun shrieks and jumps away.
“I just wanted to see if I could press the trigger,” Kyungsoo says before he bends over and tis his shoelaces.
“Don’t even think about running away.”
He doesn’t. Instead Baekhyun grabs the two empty envelopes on the table and presses his back against the door. “I told you before. I’ve never been in Seoul before.”
Kyungsoo attaches the muffler to the barrel and then throws the gun on the hotel bed and looks at Baekhyun. “Is that so?” Baekhyun nods.
“I know you have the car keys.” Kyungsoo takes two steps towards Baekhyun. “Give them to me and I’ll consider believing you.”
Baekhyun shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Soo.” He is panting and shaking.
“Don’t do this,” Kyungsoo says, and takes another step forward. Before Kyungsoo can reach him Baekhyun unlocks the door and runs outside.
Kyungsoo goes back, grabs his gun and runs after him.
Baekhyun is inside the Jaguar, wearing the police uniform and bleeding. Kyungsoo is standing by the window and holding the gun to Baekhyun’s head.
Baekhyun is scared. Baekhyun’s never been scared of him before. But this is good.
“I want you to get out of the car. And then I want you to hand me the envelopes.”
“No,” Baekhyun says so Kyungsoo presses the trigger and the gun clicks again and Kyungsoo realizes he’s forgotten to load the gun. And then Baekhyun is stepping on the pedal, accelerating and driving away.
Kyungsoo watches the Jaguar turn around the corner and disappear. He stands on the middle of the road for a while and then kicks air.
The hotel receptionist wears a blue unisex uniform and reads Shakespeare on Sundays. But when Kyungsoo steps inside the lobby, the doorman is wearing a red uniform.
He raises an eyebrow when he sees Kyungsoo. “You look beaten,” he comments before resuming his reading.
“Mondays are the worst,” he mumbles while turning pages.
“Monday?” Kyungsoo asks. “Isn’t it Sunday?”
The doorman looks at him as if he’s completely lost his mind. “It’s Monday, son.” After a moment he adds, “Is everything alright?”
Kyungsoo nods slowly and runs up the stairs His heart is beating at apex speed, throbs through his veins, reverberates in his chest, sporadic rhythm skittering over his skin, clinging to his collar like the perspiration accumulating in the inner folds of his jeans. His feelings deviate, never stay in one place. His leg is beginning to hurt. He fumbles with the key and unlocks the door.
He unloads the gun before stepping inside the bathroom and turning the shower on. He sits on the toilet seat and thinks for a long time. The shower water is cold. He used to think he knew what he was doing, but that was before profligate midnight hours and flashbulb memories his subconsciousness can’t shut down. That was before he had come to realize that humanity was just one big stream of names predestined to land on the next obituary.
He takes a deep breath, walks into the bedroom and the back into the bathroom, fingers twitching.
Eventually he gets up and looks into the mirror, lights a cigarette and swallows galled clouds of smoke.
“I am Kai.”
**
He is nine and he doesn’t remembers his name.
He sleeps for days. His mother cries at night by his beside on her knees praying to a god that doesn’t exist. He asks his mother, “Aren’t you afraid of me?” And she says, “No, of course not.”
And Kyungsoo is eighteen and he tells his father that the new mail carrier has got blood stains on his yellow work shirt, and that he is a North Korean spy. They have to move away; they will die. The mail carrier will kill them. His father holds Kyungsoo in his arms until it turns night, until the shadows have receded to the nooks of the sky, and like bones, are broken one by one.
He hears his parents, one night, speak about him. They talk fast, words sliced open and dripping, and Kyungsoo hears, “Sometimes he looks at me funny, honey.” And his mother looks like the lady that lives in their backyard that remembers Kyungsoo to take an umbrella with him to school, it might rain.
“Funny how?”
“Just funny.”
“He makes you laugh?” And his mother shakes her head.
“No?”
“No.”
“Well, how does he look at you, then?” His father laughs.
“Like I am making him sad.” And the lady that sits at night on their lawn, and she got no eyes, just gory holes in her head.
Sometimes his parents fight when they think Kyungsoo is asleep. His father says, “Am I not good enough?” And his mother says, “No, no you aren’t.” And Kyungsoo looks up at the ceiling and feels like the darkness has eyes and hands and teeth.
One day his school teacher tells his father that maybe, “Putting him on controlled medication wouldn’t be a bad idea.” And his father tells her, “My son isn’t crazy, ma’am. He is sad, confused sure, but not crazy. Medication is for crazy people.”
**
Kyungsoo pulls over and stops the engine.
Behind the Polaroid photograph, written in red marker, he reads, “Don’t Listen to Their Lies.”
He flips the Polaroid around and looks into Jongin’s face, lips pulled into a smile, showing the camera two peace signs with his fingers.
He gets out the car, photo clasped between his finger and thumb, and shivers when a hitch of cold morning air pelts against his face.
Maybe remembering is like driving on an empty highway that leads to nowhere, and the undulating scenery blurs together into blotches of cut up Technicolor behind the dirty car window pane. And the car leaves memory refuse in its wake.
He crosses the street and enters a small convenience store. It’s empty and the cashier behind the counter is watching Kyungsoo oddly.
“Excuse me, Miss?” Kyungsoo shivers and then walks to the counter and shows her the Polaroid.
“Have you seen this boy?”
Title: Undimmed By Time, Unbound By Death
Genre: Angst, Drama
Rating: NC-17
Side-Pairing: Baeksoo
Warnings: character death, violence, abuse of psychedelic drugs
Length: 7,000 words
Summary: And he is angry and hollow and won’t be silenced.
"Oh God, I wish you were not on this earth, but entirely within me, or rather that I were not on this earth, but entirely within you; I feel there is one too many of us; the separation into two people is unbearable."
- Franz Kafka, from Letters to Felice
DON’T LET THEM LIE TO YOU
He is two miles down Seoul Ring Expressway, cigarette between his lips, fingers trembling against the wheel. There is a bag on the front passenger seat. He doesn’t know what’s inside the bag.
He doesn’t know anything. Head wiped clean. He is on the run. A fugitive with an AKB in his trunk.
That’s funny.
Tell me about it!
A map is fanned out on the dashboard. The sun is making it hard for him to see anything besides vague red lines and yellow. He had put a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee on the map earlier when he had gotten the car downtown from a guy named Gook Yung.
Nice guy. They all are.
A never ending road stretches for miles down the horizon. There is morning fog everywhere. The sun feels cold on his skin. There are breadcrumbs on his dark blue pants and sticking to his shoulder pads like dandruff.
Kyungsoo pulls over and stops the engine.
He produces carcinogenic grease in form of two 200mg bullet pills from his jacket pocket and swallows them dry.
He glued a Polaroid photograph to the rear window with duct tape earlier. He yanks the photo off and holds it up against the light falling inside the car. The image shows a bed and half a face oversaturated by the camera flashlight. Behind the Polaroid photograph, written in red marker, he reads, “Don’t Listen to Their Lies.”
**
In his dream, Kai lights a cigarette and swallows galled clouds of smoke.
“Kai is Jongin.”
**
There is this theory that reality is divided in multiple layers. There are no parallel dimensions, just timelines that don’t necessarily have to go in the same direction. Death is a universal goal to each of us. It’s the end of our performance. We take a bow and go out with a bang. But that’s not what we are here for in the end.
We fade in and out.
The thing about dreams is that the human mind is perpetually refuting itself while trying to maintain the thin line separating fiction from reality. The subconscious is under constant stress, trying to preserve memory, sanity.
Try seeing it this way: It’s more of a gradual amalgamation:
Your brain attempts to connect A and B and because it can’t, you wake up. The grand apex. The joke.
There is a scream.
The first thing he sees is blood polling at the side of his head. It stings when Kyungsoo takes a deep breath and quickly exhales.
He staggers on his feet but doesn’t quite manage to stand upright. His kneecaps hurt.
Kyungsoo stumbles over cut up cushions and torn apart bed sheets. The hotel bed was stripped off everything. A man’s body is lying on the carpeted floor.
Dread builds in his stomach as suddenly the ground caves in on itself and Kyungsoo falls. He sees someone leaning over the balcony railing, falling too, before the ground engulfs him completely.
**
Kyungsoo’s father had been a proud man. He had owned a small company that sold and bought second hand cars. Business had gone steady at the beginning but his father eventually encountered financial problems post economic slump, which forced him to sell the company and their three story house and most of the comfort middle-class families were used to indulge in. While Kyungsoo’s mother hadn’t minded much at the beginning, too much in love to throw the towel still, after his father instead of looking for a new job began to attempt finding a semblance of his life post eviction at the bottom of beer bottles, their financial situation deteriorated and a divorce was inevitable.
Twitching hands, roped throat, mangled cries:
His father’s death had been both expected and dreaded and while his mother had spent many nights at her husband’s side, watching the man she’d chosen to marry gradually crumble and leave behind but markings of a distraught wreck losing himself to the semantics of basic insanity, she hadn’t dared to cry at the funeral.
What lingered after his father were not the bills nor the repeated image of a hanged man but the most comical fact death was able to convey: despite it all Kyungsoo was still living on.
Kyungsoo’s instinctual need for distance and quiet are blamed on traumatizing events that occurred during his late childhood and following puberty. After the third psychologist he is sent to, prescribes him psychological emaciation in form of 200milligram-sized blue Xanax pills he is supposed to swallow diligently every morning and every night, Kyungsoo begins to believe this isn’t clinical depression but pharmaceutical companies trying to test psychedelic drugs on him instead of on tormented Chihuahuas.
Kyungsoo isn’t suicidal or sad, he just is there, a perceptive question mark.
This is not understood. But people fail to understand in turn that Kyungsoo has never wanted to be understood.
**
Kyungsoo is jolted awake by the cold. He slips inside his pair of jeans and lurches over to the open window, mind still stuffed with sleep. Outside, he watches his neighbor walk her dog, streets congested with morning mist. He will have to wait for it to settle down, he doesn't know Geoje that well yet.
He doesn't like the suburbs, has always preferred the city and the cement canopy hanging over his head like a ubiquitous reminder that he sold his soul to Samsung and fast food restaurants. He doesn't remember why he gave his apartment in the city up. Kyungsoo leans over the windowsill, hands gripping the plastic front, and sticks his head outside. His neighbor has always had the quite admiring morning routine that begins with her rice cooker rattling so loudly around 4 AM that sometimes when Kyungsoo can’t sleep, he hears it banging against the wall.
Not many are up yet, foggy Sunday weather not exactly welcoming either, but Kyungsoo makes out few joggers, and as always old lady Goh is watering her tulips and roses across the street, his neighbor, and a boy clothed in flannel pajamas covered in jarring blue cumulus clouds. And the boy looks so painfully out of place, Kyungsoo almost laughs.
As the morning flashes by in rippled lines, without Kyungsoo noticing, the past runs away from tomorrow, dissipates, and traces the sun peeking through thick lashes of fog.
The boy in the blue pajamas articulates wildly with his arms and screams, “Good morning, Kyungsoo!”
Everywhere are echoes.
As Kyungsoo closes the window, rain pelts against the window pane.
**
There is a small police precinct in Okpo Il Dong, tucked away somewhere in the neighborhood. Kyungsoo misses Seoul.
He is introduced to a series of people and afterwards Kyungsoo only but remembers a smear of faces blurred out by his consciousness who is not used to the sudden influx of information.
Officer Kwon, who says he’s the only authority person Kyungsoo is taking orders from while on duty, is an old, bald man who wears his badge like it’s a rope around his neck.
“Your medical evaluation states you have had minor problems with remembering things. That’s why you were transferred. Needed rest,” Officer Kwon says, and his uniform makes him appear older than he really is. “Not sure if I can use someone like you here. I don’t know why everytime something goes sour downtown they push it to us. I am tired of being fed trash.” Perspiration clings to the inner side of his hands, and Kyungsoo feels dizzy.
“Look kid, I don’t care what kind of melodramatic bullshit is affecting your brain. If you mess up here, I will feed your ass to the sharks. You will be accounted for your actions, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Kyungsoo sounds more confident than he truly feels.
“You will be paired up with an officer that knows his way around here. Okpo Il is fun sized. Not much goes on here. But I don’t want you running around without someone keeping an eye on you.” Kyungsoo nods.
“I’ll contact the station,” Officer Kwon mumbles and then he is out the door.
One of the people at the station Kyungsoo is introduced to is Baekhyun who shows up at work with purple hair. But Officer Kwon does not seem to mind so Kyungsoo doesn’t either.
The station is smaller than the one he worked at in Seoul. There are about ten police officers present, a number that seems almost laughable compared to what he was used to from the big city. He is not given his own desk but is allotted a partner. His babysitter for the first week, as Officer Kwon had promised.
Baekhyun is disorganized and careless and seems to care little for his reputation. “Geoje is too small for me to give a damn about what happens to it. Quite frankly no one here cares all that much. You shouldn’t ether.”
They work in silence. Kyungsoo is given most paperwork and as he peruses them he notices that most date back to last year.
It is Baekhyun who strikes up conversation first when he returns after having excused himself an hour ago.
"You look like you come from the city. Where are you from?"
"Seoul.” There is ink on Kyungsoo’s fingertips and his neck feels stiff.
"Seoul, huh? The only city boy I've talked to besides you is Chanyeol. Chanyeol is the grocery market cop,” Baekhyun says, while closing the door behind him. Kyungsoo looks at him funny.
“Local watch dog without a badge,” Baekhyun elaborates and shrugs his coat off of his shoulders. He smells like cigarettes. “My girlfriend is always making fun of him.”
Kyungsoo doesn’t know what he is supposed to do so he squirms uncomfortably in his seat and hopes for an alien invasion or a natural disaster so he can put today behind him and burn in the zealous flames of hell in peace.
“Baekhyun, you said you know everyone around here, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I’ve been running into this guy as of the late. He said his name is Kai. Ever heard of him?”
“Kai…,” Baekhyun seems genuinely intrigued for a moment but then slowly shakes his hand. “No, never heard of him,” he says. “Maybe he moved to Geoje recently, too, like you.”
“Yeah,” Kyungsoo mumbles after a while. “Thanks Baekhyun.”
“That’s what I am here for, bud.”
It is only later that Kyungsoo realizes the boy in the blue pajamas never told him his name.
**
As his first week in Geoje eventually passes by without greater incidents Kyungsoo begins to think that the boy in the blue pajamas might have been a stress induced hallucination caused by Officer Kwon’s strongly worded welcome. He conducts research online and his thesis is supported by a number of threads he finds on several forums about mental health. He also skims through the Wikipedia article on hallucinations and concludes that he has to learn to handle stressful situations better.
He also finds Baekhyun more bearable. He is overly talkative and slacks off most of the time but is not exactly bad company.
“It’s been raining for days,” Baekhyun mumbles while drawing the blinds.
“I forgot to close my window and woke up thinking I was drowning. When I was younger my grandfather owned a boat. He’d take me fishing every weekend. It was extremely traumatizing.”
“Have you ever been to an engagement party before,” Baekhyun asks while watching Kyungsoo type.
“My best friend getting married next Wednesday.” Baekhyun, Kyungsoo notices, has the habit of asking questions he doesn’t really want answers to. “I don’t want to go alone.”
“I thought you had a girlfriend.”
“We broke up.”
“Why?” Kyungsoo asks, not exactly interested in knowing more.
“Because I like boys.” Baekhyun looks like he is expecting Kyungsoo to bolt out the door.
“Then ask a boy to go with you.”
“That’s what I’m doing. I’m asking you.”
Kyungsoo looks at Baekhyun. “Okay, let’s say I go with you. Why are you making such a big deal out of this? You said the guy is your best friend.”
Baekhyun is quiet for a long time. Kyungsoo resumes typing until Baekhyun says, “I have been in love with him for the past twelve years.”
“Your life is a mess.”
Baekhyun laughs.
“Okay,” Kyungsoo says. “I’ll go.”
**
Sometimes Kyungsoo sits in the kitchen, holding the manila envelopes in his hands, and wonders what would happen if he just opened them.
**
The engagement party is held in the only local four stars hotel with an impeccable view of the sea and Geoje’s skyline.
Baekhyun proves to be even more pleasant company outside the station as he never allows Kyungsoo to keep to himself and is always engaging him in conversation with either him or other guests Baekhyun is familiar with. Baekhyun fills the gaps in with words Kyungsoo leaves behind. Kyungsoo eyes the swaying surge of people, glimmering and glistering under the large embellished chandelier hanging from the golden celling.
Kyungsoo is introduced to Chanyeol and his wife after champagne is served and the music picks on speed. It’s abnormally nice, being part of a large crowd. He forgets about Kai and the carcinogenic pills he has to take daily.
“Chanyeol, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun says. “Kyungsoo, Chanyeol.” Chanyeol has the whitest set of teeth Kyungsoo’s ever seen.
“Nice to finally meet you, man. Baekhyun’s been talking about you a lot, lately,” Chanyeol says. And he has a very boisterous voice. Makes sense seen as he’s Baekhyun’s best friend. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo shake hands.
“I hope he’s only said good things.”
“Only good things,” Baekhyun promises.
“Well, we are talking about Baekhyun here.” Chanyeol laughs. “He’s been born to talk shit.” Kyungsoo concurs wholeheartedly and Baekhyun shrieks in disbelief.
The rest of the night passes by without greater incidents. Chanyeol is charming and completely in love with his fiancée. Kyungsoo is surprised to catch sight of genuine content on Baekhyun’s face while he exchanges a few words with her.
“She’s nice and pretty and right for Chanyeol,” Baekhyun explains when he catches Kyungsoo watching him.
“I can’t… I’m not like her. And that’s fine. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am not comparing myself to her. I’m just stating the obvious. Besides, it’s not like I can change the situation anyway. So I might make the best of it, right?”
“Right,” Kyungsoo agrees.
“Everyone at one point in their lives has an unrequired crush. Some just give up faster than others,” Baekhyun says.
“That’s a nice way of putting it.”
Baekhyun beams. “I should become a poet or something. I know my way around with words.” He wiggles his fingers dramatically as if to make a point.
“I’m glad it’s her,” he says. “I’m glad he fell in love with her.” But Baekhyun doesn’t really look like he means what he is saying. It’s funny, how we decorate heartbreaks.
Kyungsoo looks over at the two dancing and looking laughing and leaning against another.
“They are the type of couple who never cheat on another or fight,” Baekhyun laughs. “So annoying.”
**
The nights in Geoje is always bigger than what he remembers them to being in Seoul. Skies abide by no limit here. So he looks up in awe, for a moment, and nothing is ever still, not even the stars hanging over his head. The jacket he is wearing it too thin, and so the cold creeps and is a constant during his walk back home. He is not expecting Kai, but yet he is. He always is. Kai is sitting on a swing wearing his blue pajama, shoes covered in sand, like everything else in Geoje. He looks sad, or maybe confused. It’s too dark to place feelings in meaningful order.
Kai’s hair is wild, tousled by the late noon breeze. He looks like one of the models inside the magazines Baekhyun likes to read during coffee breaks. It’s not meant as a compliment.
Kai hasn’t noticed him yet. Still too preoccupied by catching his shadow, sharing secrets with ghosts. Kyungsoo wouldn’t be all too surprised. He does it too.
He sneaks up on Kai from behind, and pushes him hard. The swing creaks and Kai yelps.
“Surprise!” Kai reddens and turns around to face Kyungsoo.
“What are you doing here all alone?”
“I was… thinking,” Kai says.
“You look like you are always thinking.”
Kai laughs and says, “Nice suit.”
“I was someone’s boyfriend tonight.”
He nods, and looks down at his feet. “Did you have fun?”
Kyungsoo contemplates his answer for a moment, whenever he should be honest or not, and then says, “Yeah. It was nice.”
They walk in silence. It gives him to think. Kyungsoo is always fleeing, always tripping over bodies. And Kai, he figures, is not different. He wonders why he has taken to like Kai. He barely knows him. Maybe there is no reason behind it, no reason needed.
"Have you ever felt like dying? Like killing yourself," Kai asks when they reach his neighborhood.
"To kill not yourself for the sake of ending your psychological decomposition, but to kill this ugly thing inside of yourself. That thing that looks back at you in the mirror. The thing that sleeps in your bed and wears your clothes. The thing everyone loves. Because they can’t difference the real you from the phony you. And it’s not their fault. They just don’t love you enough to take a closer look." The streetlamp flickers, needs to be fixed, and instead of shimmery dots, crimped light debris press against gravity and fall against Kai’s profile. The light makes him look like a paper cut-out.
Unmoving.
Dead.
"Because sometimes when you are lying in bed, it breathes down your neck. And it feels like dying. So you tell yourself 'I'll kill myself before this thing can do it,' but in truth you are the thing.” Kai smiles.
"In truth, there is no one else but you."
Kai says:
"You know what your problem is?"
Kyungsoo is both mentally and physically fatigued.
"Amuse me,” he says while unlocking the door to his tenement.
"You are running away from nothing.” Kai’s eyes are wide. He looks hysterical.
“Your head doesn't let you. And I mean, I wouldn’t care if at least you were running away from something, from someone. But nothing?
"Vague memories are still memories, Kyungsoo."
Kyungsoo looks at Kai for a moment, hand gripping the door handle, skin pressing against cold metal, and it’s starting to hurt but Kyungsoo feels as if he’s gone through this before. And it’s exhausting because Kai always speaks in riddles, always spits and sneers out elegies about how inane Kyungsoo’s behavior is and Kyungsoo wants him to stop.
Before he lurches the stairs to his apartment up he says, “You are a nobody. I don’t need psychotherapeutic advice from a narcissistic wreck like you.”
And before Kai can respond, Kyungsoo has closed the door and is running up the stairs.
Later he looks outside the window but Kai is gone.
**
His reflection says, I am slowly dying from the inside out. It says, don’t believe them, they are not here to help you.
He can’t move on. Stuck in Limbo.
**
“I’m sorry, Do-ssi. I forgot to get sugar yesterday.”
The girl that lives next to him is pretty. She has long hair and big eyes. Kyungsoo hands her a cup with sugar while smiling. “Don’t worry too much. It’s okay,” he laughs.
“That’s what neighbors are for.”
“You are an angel,” she says. Kai is standing behind her. He is wearing a black tee.
Kai looks at his neighbor funnily and Kyungsoo stops smiling. Instead he looks down for a moment, wondering why he feels guilty all of the sudden. Then it’s gone and he is smiling at his neighbor again.
“I have to,” Kyungsoo starts. “Oh yes of course. Thank you once again for the sugar. See you around, Do-ssi!” She waves at him and on her way back to her apartment she ignores Kai completely. Eventually she disappears and Kai steps forward and pushes Kyungsoo back inside and closes the door behind him.
Kai is impatient. He licks into Kyungsoo’s mouth while fumbling with his belt, hands everywhere and nowhere. As if there isn’t enough time. They don’t come far, stuck in the living room, Kyungsoo’s back arched against the wooden floor while Kai’s hand slips down Kyungsoo’s jeans.
Kyungsoo hisses through clenched teeth when Kai takes his cock in his hand and squeezes, thumb pressing under the head. He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed that he is already painfully hard. Kai pumps slowly, free hand pushing against Kyungsoo’s stomach to keep him from thrusting into his palm.
Stale air, palpable commotion; he can feel himself disintegrating into nothing.
Sex with Kai hurts.
Kai thrusts too fast, too deep, and when he licks into Kyungsoo’s mouth it feels like he is trying to eat him whole. Kyungsoo can’t get enough.
It’s obscene, the way Kai grunts above him, presses his fingers into Kyungsoo’s mouth, breaks skin, lost between amplified hysteria and thin threaded insanity. Kai fucks him like he wants his love to break jaws, and fracture bones the same way fists do.
He abhors the stark contrast of perceptions. The kiss he places on Kai’s cheek, teeth scraping against salty skin, tasting for the echoes of past lovers, of memory refuse that is not his own.
He feels childish, like he is twelve again, inside his old worn jumper, holding his mother’s hand, trying to hold not love, but to immortalize the feeling of belonging, of being.
Kyungsoo’s fingers furl around the bed sheets, eyes shut tightly. And for a moment the only thing he sees is darkness.
When he comes and Kai collapses on top of him, Kyungsoo feels nothing.
“I love you,” Kai says.
“You love me in ways hard for me to understand.”
Kai rolls over, chest sinking and rising rapidly.
“But you can’t understand what I feel anyway, can you? So it doesn’t matter.”
Kyungsoo thinks it should matter.
**
Sometimes Kai becomes Jongin.
But Kyungsoo doesn’t know Jongin.
**
It’s raining and Kyungsoo forgot his umbrella at home so he is standing underneath the roof awning of the convenience store down the street. His jacket is drenched. He shivers and sticks his numb fingers inside his jacket pockets.
Kyungsoo is so preoccupied with the rain that it takes him a moment until he notices Kai standing next to him. He looks to his right and Kai is just standing there, doing nothing.
“Remember when we first met?” Kai asks.
“You were wearing that blue pajama,” Kyungsoo says.
“No.”
“No?”
“I was four and you were five and we were both in kindergarten.”
Kyungsoo shakes his head slowly. “No, we met last week for the first time. You were walking down the street at the crack of dawn wearing that obnoxious pajama.”
Kai seems unfazed and continues, “Our parents didn’t like another much so we weren’t allowed to play with each other. I guess my mother knew then that I would fall unfathomably deeply in love with you,” he chuckles and then shrugs the cold off.
“No,” Kyungsoo says.
“And then we got into the same school. And I just couldn’t help loving you more and more.” Kai looks very sad, shoulders slumped, when he says, “We can’t keep pretending.”
“I don’t think I can follow.” Kyungsoo laughs, nervously.
“Kyungsoo you have to eventually wake up,” Kai kneels down before Kyungsoo. And it’s raining so it rains down Kai’s back. Except, not one drop of water hits Kai.
“Please,” Kai says. “Please remember.”
Kyungsoo’s been wondering for the past week why he fell in love with Kai so fast. Because the only thing Kai does is talk nonsense and kiss him. Maybe the core of the problem lies not there.
Kai stands up slowly and looks at Kyungsoo before taking his face in his hands and kissing Kyungsoo. Kai normally doesn’t kiss him so tenderly. He is always biting and bruising like he wants to leave something behind so Kyungsoo can’t forget. But he is not doing that now, he is just kissing him and breathing shallow and fast against his lips.
And then Kai steps back and says, “I’m sorry, Kyungsoo.”
And then Kai is ramming Kyungsoo’s head into the sidewalk. Kyungsoo gasps for air and tries to defend himself but Kai kicks him over and for a moment does nothing, just stares. Kyungsoo breathes in and forgets to scream so Kai swings his fist and breaks Kyungsoo’s nose.
Kyungsoo lurches on all his fours away from Kai towards the street, but Kai grabs his feet and pulls him back.
This time Kyungsoo has time to breathe in and screams. The street is empty and the only thing that buzzes in his ears is his own blood running and sprinting down his veins and his scream resound through gravity.
Everything disintegrates eventually. Reality crumbles, continually, and turns into anything associated with heartbreak, redefined by gunpowder.
He feels the constant pulse under his skin beating in rhythm with his sobs.
Kyungsoo learns then that everyone has their very own private sound of laughter, but crying always sounds the same: hollow and painful.
He watches his own blood run in between the crevices of aged tarmac.
The sirens resound through the late evening like the shrieks of the vultures flying over his head.
He lies there on the sidewalk, fallen, broken and feeling fear creep up on him like darkness.
And then he is gone.
**
Dreams are:
Dried blood under his fingernails, hair tousled by the late afternoon, clothes still damp from the early morning rain. If he looks down the street, past the naked and dead tree branches, through the fog congested city vein, all he sees are mirrored buildings and himself staring back.
His lungs inflate with idle fear of death. His hands quiver, his fingers twitch - if he looks closely he can see that the Him down the street has got no face.
So he reaches for his gun, fumbles with his belt, gropes for the holster, except there is nothing, just wet leather and his mud caked jeans.
Other times dreams are:
A boy with a semi-automatic handgun, a dented Fiat and a bottle of 200 milligram sized red bullet capsules he swallows dry before accelerating one last time. And he is angry and hollow and won’t be silenced. For three seconds, he flies.
The worst dreams are neither the nightmares nor memories, it’s sitting at a cafe bulging with faces and voices and dreams and conversations that go well with his espresso. He sees, and he doesn’t want to: putrescent vestige of human waste no one acknowledges out of fear of catching Death.
And death is everywhere. It drips down his chin everytime he opens his mouth; it’s the dandruff that sticks to his black suit in the summer when he can’t get his fingers to stop trembling; it’s the soap foam that collects in the drain and dries and leaves behind small grey fingerprints inside the pipe walls.
Maybe he’s fallen so quickly in love with Kai because Kai was part of him and part of Jongin. He was never a stranger. Just a washed out copy. Maybe that’s why Kai never felt, never tasted like a stranger.
The thing about dreams, is that you are fully cognizant of the villains, of the shadows, of the ghosts of past lovers you welcome inside your subconscious. There is no one to blame but yourself.
Kyungsoo dreams that Jongin holds his hand in his and laughs and his hair dances with the late noon breeze that forces everything into action.
Jongin says, "Don’t let go. Never let go."
And Kyungsoo doesn't.
Kyungsoo dreams that Jongin looks at him funny. Jongin cowers before the school gate, cigarette between his lips, and he looks at Kyungsoo like he has done something bad. Like he has robbed a bank, killed someone, broken his heart.
"This isn't right. You aren't right."
Kyungsoo dreams that Jongin cries.
"They rejected him," his mother says while Kyungsoo is taking his shoes off.
"The letter came yesterday. He isn't what they are looking for. Jongin said the instructor called him untalented. He hasn't eaten all day."
Kyungsoo nods, looks down at Pororo smiling on his socks until Jongin's mother says, "He is upstairs."
Kyungsoo dreams that Jongin holds his hand.
“Will it hurt,” Kyungsoo asks, voice very quiet.
“Understanding,” Jongin says, “always hurts.”
**
The first thing Kyungsoo sees is Baekhyun's worn-out coat he’s been wearing since the day Kyungsoo arrived in Geoje. White walls is the second thing he sees, followed by white sheets, white bandages and white curtains. He is not inside his old jeans anymore, nor is he wearing his black tee. There is a needle buried in his left arm and he is hooked to a machine.
"The doctor said you’ll survive," Baekhyun says. And to Kyungsoo, Baekhyun looks odd, sounds as if his words carry hidden significance.
"He also said you're..."
Light presses against the windows and lay shattered on the bed sheets, sit heavily on his skin. Baekhyun’s sun soaked hair is undone and the brown hair is growing out.
Baekhyun looks exhausted, face features weathered by worry, maybe anxiety. He looks as if he is looking for words to cushion the shot he is about to deliver.
Lastly he settles on, “Schizophrenic. Jesus fucking Christ.”
"I... didn't know,” Kyungsoo eventually says, “That Jongin died. I mean, I did. I was there when he died. But... It’s hard to explain."
Baekhyun looks at Kyungsoo for a moment, then sits on the plastic stool standing next to the hospital bed.
"Who is Kai exactly?"
"When we were younger... Jongin dreamt of becoming an actor. We were kids, it didn’t exactly mean anything. I wanted to become president at some point during my childhood.” Kyungsoo’s fingers are twitching. “His mother was so vehement on turning Jongin into a celebrity, and it was absolutely disgusting. As long as I’ve known Jongin, Jongin was always attending auditions, special training, dance classes-it was suffocating,” Kyungsoo pauses, looks at Baekhyun as if asking for permission to continue. Baekhyun nods.
“He was rejected. They said he wasn’t what they were looking for. And the instructor called Jongin untalented, a bad dancer. To Jongin, that was the hardest to accept, the hardest pill to swallow. He wanted it so much and-
"That night, he called me. Said he had things to say. I didn’t think much. Jongin always wanted to talk. And then people ask me, did you know Kim Jongin? Like his name is taped to my forehead and tattooed on my tongue.”
Baekhyun looks at him funny. Kyungsoo swallows hard.
“Did I know Jongin? That’s a good question,” he inhales slowly, “But no, I did not,” he exhales quickly. “I did not know Jongin. But I knew Kai and that was as close to the real thing you could get. Kai was everything Jongin was scared of being. He was,” everything Kyungsoo was scared of being. “He was charismatic,” he says instead.
“Kyungsoo, what happened?”
Kyungsoo shrugs. “Jongin committed suicide.”
Because Jongin wanted Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo wanted Kai and Kai wanted Jongin.
It’s not always that complicated. It’s not always about cryptic orders or antiquated theories. Sometimes love is enough.
Kyungsoo wonders if perhaps one day Jongin woke up suddenly and found that his love, as much as it was hopeless and dolorous to heed, like memories of better days, always better days, told himself, “To hell with it. I won’t lament. I will suffer it.”
“I forgot many things after Jongin died. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. They said it messed with my head.” Baekhyun isn’t saying anything anymore, he isn’t even looking at Kyungsoo. He is just looking down at his fingers.
Something settles at the bottom of his stomach his consciousness associates with dread.
“Sometimes bad things happen and you can’t do anything about it.”
Baekhyun is still not looking him in the face.
Kyungsoo pulls at the needle buried in his arm and struggles to stand up. He realizes only after he’s standing, naked feet on cold tiled floor, that he is wearing only a hospital gown and nothing underneath. He opens the small closet next to the hospital bed sees his clothes there, fresh from the laundry, and turns his back to Baekhyun and puts them on.
And then he yanks the hospital gown off of him and crumples the soft plastic and throws it into the trash.
Kyungsoo has problems with tying his shoelaces so Baekhyun kneels down and ties them for him.
“We love the recently deceased.” Kyungsoo frowns and zips his jacket up. “Like it matters. Like our love can bring them back. There is no utility in that. It’s nonsense. The dead do not need the living’s tears. Let them rest. Let them sleep.
Baekhyun hands Kyungsoo his umbrella before he opens the door.
“The dead are better left dead.”
Baekhyun just nods, lips pressed into a line.
“I need to go to Seoul, see Jongin,” Kyungsoo says. “I need to see his grave.”
Baekhyun is sitting behind the steering wheel because Kyungsoo can’t stop crying. They stop by Kyungsoo’s apartment so he can get his things. Kyungsoo only grabs the two manila envelopes and a pair of shoes. Then he closes the door to his apartment, looks over to the door next to his and mouths, “Goodbye”. And then he is running down to meet Baekhyun.
They don’t talk and he doesn’t tell Baekhyun about the gun in his bag.
They reach Busan by the morning and Kyungsoo feels too tired to notice Baekhyun pulling over at motorway station.
“There is a hotel here,” Baekhyun mumbles while unlocking his safety belt and pulling it off. “I can’t keep driving anymore.” Kyungsoo peers at Baekhyun through heavy lashes and just nods.
To Kyungsoo’s surprise the hotel looks decent. A neon board flickers, now and then, and reads OPEN 24HRS in bold neon pink.
The lobby is dimly lit and a man behind the counter is reading a thick book.
Baekhyun coughs, “Uh, we’d like a room for two.”
The hotel receptionist looks up from his book and eyes them both before nodding. There are grease stains on his uniform. He notices Kyungsoo staring and says, “We charge hundred per night. How long are you staying?”
“Just tonight,” Kyungsoo says.
The hotel receptionist looks at them strangely before handing them their room key. “Breakfast is served at 8 AM,” he says. “At 10 AM everything is cleared.” Baekhyun smiles at him but doesn’t really mean it. To Kyungsoo it looks like a lazy pull of lips. “Also we don’t have reception out here.”
“Thank you,” Baekhyun says and then pulls Kyungsoo along with him. The hotel receptionist watches them until they enter the elevator doors close.
“He was kinda weird,” Baekhyun mumbles.
“I’m too tired to care,” Kyungsoo says. His tongue sits heavy in his mouth. Baekhyun snickers.
They don’t bother with their luggage or their clothes and fall asleep almost immediately after lying down on the queen-sized bed still in their jackets.
**
Kyungsoo dreams that Kai is sitting on his old broken couch back in Gangnam-gu, waiting for him.
He is wearing the black tee Kyungsoo bought him to his twentieth birthday and crying so Kyungsoo promises him he’ll make it home.
**
Kyungsoo wakes up in Baekhyun’s arms and he feels completely dead inside.
He closes his eyes and opens them again. He does this a few times before he keeps them shut and realizes that no matter what he does, Jongin’s still dead.
Baekhyun moves in his sleep and sniffles. He talks sometimes, too. Kyungsoo watches him for a while, then he slowly untangles himself from Baekhyun and gets up. His back hurts and his neck is stiff. His left wrist is still bandaged and it itches.
He opens his bag and takes the manila envelopes out and looks at them for a long time, and decides to peek inside. But there is nothing there besides a Polaroid photograph. He turns it over and written in red marker, he reads, “Don’t Listen to Their Lies.”
“What are you doing?” Baekhyun lifts his head and looks at Kyungsoo, face red. “Come back to sleep.” He rubs at his eyes and yawns.
“Baekhyun, have you ever been in Seoul?” Kyungsoo asks.
Baekhyun rolls over and pushes the blanket aside. “No,” he says. “I like the isolation of the countryside.”
Kyungsoo nods then pockets the photo and closes the envelopes again. He stands up and this time takes the gun from his bag. And then he holds the gun to Baekhyun’s head and counts to three and pulls the trigger.
The cartridges are empty. He only hears the gun click. Baekhyun shrieks and jumps away.
“I just wanted to see if I could press the trigger,” Kyungsoo says before he bends over and tis his shoelaces.
“Don’t even think about running away.”
He doesn’t. Instead Baekhyun grabs the two empty envelopes on the table and presses his back against the door. “I told you before. I’ve never been in Seoul before.”
Kyungsoo attaches the muffler to the barrel and then throws the gun on the hotel bed and looks at Baekhyun. “Is that so?” Baekhyun nods.
“I know you have the car keys.” Kyungsoo takes two steps towards Baekhyun. “Give them to me and I’ll consider believing you.”
Baekhyun shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Soo.” He is panting and shaking.
“Don’t do this,” Kyungsoo says, and takes another step forward. Before Kyungsoo can reach him Baekhyun unlocks the door and runs outside.
Kyungsoo goes back, grabs his gun and runs after him.
Baekhyun is inside the Jaguar, wearing the police uniform and bleeding. Kyungsoo is standing by the window and holding the gun to Baekhyun’s head.
Baekhyun is scared. Baekhyun’s never been scared of him before. But this is good.
“I want you to get out of the car. And then I want you to hand me the envelopes.”
“No,” Baekhyun says so Kyungsoo presses the trigger and the gun clicks again and Kyungsoo realizes he’s forgotten to load the gun. And then Baekhyun is stepping on the pedal, accelerating and driving away.
Kyungsoo watches the Jaguar turn around the corner and disappear. He stands on the middle of the road for a while and then kicks air.
The hotel receptionist wears a blue unisex uniform and reads Shakespeare on Sundays. But when Kyungsoo steps inside the lobby, the doorman is wearing a red uniform.
He raises an eyebrow when he sees Kyungsoo. “You look beaten,” he comments before resuming his reading.
“Mondays are the worst,” he mumbles while turning pages.
“Monday?” Kyungsoo asks. “Isn’t it Sunday?”
The doorman looks at him as if he’s completely lost his mind. “It’s Monday, son.” After a moment he adds, “Is everything alright?”
Kyungsoo nods slowly and runs up the stairs His heart is beating at apex speed, throbs through his veins, reverberates in his chest, sporadic rhythm skittering over his skin, clinging to his collar like the perspiration accumulating in the inner folds of his jeans. His feelings deviate, never stay in one place. His leg is beginning to hurt. He fumbles with the key and unlocks the door.
He unloads the gun before stepping inside the bathroom and turning the shower on. He sits on the toilet seat and thinks for a long time. The shower water is cold. He used to think he knew what he was doing, but that was before profligate midnight hours and flashbulb memories his subconsciousness can’t shut down. That was before he had come to realize that humanity was just one big stream of names predestined to land on the next obituary.
He takes a deep breath, walks into the bedroom and the back into the bathroom, fingers twitching.
Eventually he gets up and looks into the mirror, lights a cigarette and swallows galled clouds of smoke.
“I am Kai.”
**
He is nine and he doesn’t remembers his name.
He sleeps for days. His mother cries at night by his beside on her knees praying to a god that doesn’t exist. He asks his mother, “Aren’t you afraid of me?” And she says, “No, of course not.”
And Kyungsoo is eighteen and he tells his father that the new mail carrier has got blood stains on his yellow work shirt, and that he is a North Korean spy. They have to move away; they will die. The mail carrier will kill them. His father holds Kyungsoo in his arms until it turns night, until the shadows have receded to the nooks of the sky, and like bones, are broken one by one.
He hears his parents, one night, speak about him. They talk fast, words sliced open and dripping, and Kyungsoo hears, “Sometimes he looks at me funny, honey.” And his mother looks like the lady that lives in their backyard that remembers Kyungsoo to take an umbrella with him to school, it might rain.
“Funny how?”
“Just funny.”
“He makes you laugh?” And his mother shakes her head.
“No?”
“No.”
“Well, how does he look at you, then?” His father laughs.
“Like I am making him sad.” And the lady that sits at night on their lawn, and she got no eyes, just gory holes in her head.
Sometimes his parents fight when they think Kyungsoo is asleep. His father says, “Am I not good enough?” And his mother says, “No, no you aren’t.” And Kyungsoo looks up at the ceiling and feels like the darkness has eyes and hands and teeth.
One day his school teacher tells his father that maybe, “Putting him on controlled medication wouldn’t be a bad idea.” And his father tells her, “My son isn’t crazy, ma’am. He is sad, confused sure, but not crazy. Medication is for crazy people.”
**
Kyungsoo pulls over and stops the engine.
Behind the Polaroid photograph, written in red marker, he reads, “Don’t Listen to Their Lies.”
He flips the Polaroid around and looks into Jongin’s face, lips pulled into a smile, showing the camera two peace signs with his fingers.
He gets out the car, photo clasped between his finger and thumb, and shivers when a hitch of cold morning air pelts against his face.
Maybe remembering is like driving on an empty highway that leads to nowhere, and the undulating scenery blurs together into blotches of cut up Technicolor behind the dirty car window pane. And the car leaves memory refuse in its wake.
He crosses the street and enters a small convenience store. It’s empty and the cashier behind the counter is watching Kyungsoo oddly.
“Excuse me, Miss?” Kyungsoo shivers and then walks to the counter and shows her the Polaroid.
“Have you seen this boy?”