Fade Into You
Title: Fade Into You
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3.9k
Summary: "What do you want, Chanyeol?" That's a good question Chanyeol has no concrete answer to. He hasn't reached home yet. Or peace. He is his sister's ambitions she wasn't able to take to grave with her.
Warning/s: character death, attempted suicide (this is not a sad story)
Yura dies at age twenty-four.
A ghost driver loses control over his car, veers violently out of the right lane and crashes into her Fiat at 5 AM. She was driving home.
What follows is a sequence of happenings revolving around Chanyeol’s family and his everyday life gradually crumbling to dust. His sister is buried six feet underground, with only her granite tombstone to heed her name, her smile, and her words of advice when Chanyeol wasn’t sure who he was. The stone underneath his fingers feels cold and becomes just a mocking reminder that she is dead. And that the dead stay dead.
Two autumns pass by, stain and break and Chanyeol abides by the inane notion he lives in a warm house.
**
Yura used to ask, “What do you expect from life?”
Chanyeol expected to be stuck in Busan forever. He expected to nurse his mother until she eventually succumbed to her age. He also expected to see Yura become a big name. Unreachable. Unsayable. Someone people would talk about in awe. There weren’t many things Chanyeol was looking forward to, mostly because there is only so much you can turn into poetry, but watching his sister become greater than himself was one of the things Chanyeol couldn’t wait to witness.
“I don’t expect much,” Chanyeol would lastly say.
**
Chanyeol and his mother used to live in a small apartment in Geoje, but when Yura got a job in Seoul as estate broker, they moved with her. Chanyeol had been fifteen then.
Chanyeol hasn’t been inside his sister’s room for weeks. It’s still as pink as he remember it being before she died. And it’s silly to assume something would change. He thought all color would have been gone, like she took every last bit of life with her when she died. He sits on her bed for a while, looks over her desk, flower shaped carpet, and white wardrobe. She had always been a big fan of SHINee, the poster is still there, glued to wood. Chanyeol doesn’t want to cry but the tears come anyway. He thinks of all the times they fought over the stupidest things and he regrets it so much he almost chokes on it. He rests his head on her pillow that still smells like her but he finds it to be oddly hard. He uprights himself and takes the pillow in his hands and then he notices a book the size of his closed fist underneath it.
He feels a bit guilty but opens what he assumes to be her diary, anyway.
5 THINGS I VOW TO DO BEFORE DYING
Chanyeol swallows hard.
1.) Own a pink Bentley.
2.) Learn French.
3.) Be kissed in the rain.
4.) Dye his hair pink.
5.) Make sure Chanyeol is happy.
**
His mother has locked herself inside her bedroom since the funeral and Chanyeol has taken an indefinite hiatus from university to look after her and the house.
Chanyeol peels off his jeans with the intention of taking a shower and discovers a line of scar that begins on his left hip and stops in the inside of his thigh. He can’t remember what could have caused the scar, nor why it’s so oddly placed. He wonders. He never takes a shower, instead puts his jeans inside the wash machine and sits in front of his mother’s bedroom door. He sits there for a while, hands resting on his bare thighs, butt on the carpeted floor. He thinks of what to say, but reaches the conclusion that he has not a clue how to comfort a mother. She has a right to mourn. But she’s been mourning for two days and Chanyeol thinks that can’t be quite normal.
Sadness is wuthering. Grief is worse. It’s like living in perpetual downpour, wind leaning against skin and knocking over every calendar sheet. Depression lacks a sense of time and so his mother is caught in the maelstrom of cessation.
He knocks against the door and already knows she won’t open so he lies down and finds the hallway is too narrow for him to stretch his legs and instead leans them against the wall.
He lies there for a long time, thinking, breathing, hairy legs up in the air.
Chanyeol’s father had been a car enthusiast. He would take Chanyeol to motor shows and urge him to take pictures of the cars presented he liked the most. At the end of the day they’d talk about the pictures they both had taken and cars and Chanyeol, if he is honest with himself, misses that the most.
Jongin’s father runs a car repair shop in Incheon. Chanyeol used to work part-time there once a week to earn his own pocket money to buy teenager nonsense and impress the girls that lived in his neighborhood. That was before he realized that he didn’t like girls all that much.
Sometimes it’s not even the trips that make the most of his father’s absence but the parental figure that was taken from him before he reached his late teens. His mother had always been emotionally unstable; always stumbling towards the future, always barely hanging on. Yet his father stabilized her in ways that are not possible for Chanyeol. Because at the end of the day he is just an unemployed university dropout.
He knocks again.
Complete silence.
He takes a deep breath before standing up and getting the master key that is inside the cookie jar in the kitchen that hasn’t been used to store cookies since Chanyeol was sixteen. She hasn’t eaten nor drunken anything since last night. His hands are trembling so it takes him a few tries before he is able to unlock the door.
Chanyeol has seen his mother do many reckless things during his childhood. After his father died she tried to find a semblance of love at the bottom of whiskey glasses. Yura knew how to handle that side of her, Chanyeol doesn’t. It had always been Yura who pushed his mother under the shower and clothed her afterwards. Chanyeol didn’t know how to offer her any comfort. They all were grieving. Perhaps he had always been just bitter his mother was the one the privilege of mourning was allotted to.
He is not prepared to see what lies behind the door to his mother’s bedroom.
Chanyeol runs to his room and tosses aside the blanket, cushions, fumbles with his jacket in search of his cellphone and it only is a matter of seconds but to him it takes awfully long until he is able to call for help.
He finds his mother on her bed with galled red lines on each of her wrists.
She’s unresponsive.
**
His mother is hospitalized and Chanyeol holds her hand throughout it all. He holds her hand inside the ambulance while she’s crying and screaming and asking why Chanyeol is doing this to her. And he holds her hand while the doctor sticks needles in her arms until she goes limp and stops crying.
It’s not all that bad, he thinks. People will care for her here.
The hospital looks nice from afar and there are yellow poppies inside a clear glass vase on the bedside table beside his mother’s bed. The sheets are clean and the blinds have been drawn so sun shines inside her room and his mother will like it here. She just needs time. Because she is sad and confused. And that’s the core problem.
**
Chanyeol has never bought candy from a vending machine before. But as he chews and swallows he finds that it doesn’t taste any different from the candy he sometimes buys at the convenience store near the house he shares with his mother. He had found ten thousand won in his jeans pocket and now regrets having inserted it into the vending machine because he still has to catch the train back home.
He is eyeing a pack of M&Ms, hands pressed against the thick glass front when someone approaches him. “Park Chanyeol?”
All the doctors and hospital personnel he has dealt with so far have been old so Chanyeol is surprised to see a young man inside a white coat before him holding a clipboard.
“I have a few questions. You are free to go leave afterwards.” White coat guy says while sitting down on one of the orange plastic chairs in the hallway.
“Uh, so… was it common for--,” White coat guy stops and looks at Chanyeol oddly. “Could you sit down? You are making me nervous.” Chanyeol sits next to him and White coat guy looks pleased and proceeds. Chanyeol can make out the name ‘Kim Junmyeon’ on the golden nametag pinned to the breast pocket of his white coat. The name sounds a bit silly to Chanyeol but he doesn’t say that.
“Okay, Hi. I’m not yet Doctor Kim so Junmyeon will do,” White coat guy says while smiling and Chanyeol takes that as a good sign for him to relax. “I still have five years of residency before me but here I am. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you. My name is Chanyeol.”
Junmyeon laughs before taking a pen from his breast pocket and focusing on his clipboard. “Does Mrs. Park have any allergies?”
“No food allergies.”
“What about medicaments?”
Chanyeol shakes his head after a moment. “I don’t think so.” Junmyeon nods.
“Has Mrs. Park showed signs of depression before?”
“She… She isn’t crazy,” Chanyeol takes a deep breath before looking down at his lap. “She is just sad. She went through a lot after my sister died.” Chanyeol can hear paper rustling and then the hollow sound of something scraping on wood. “I’m sorry for your loss, Chanyeol.” Junmyeon sounds sincere but Chanyeol would rather Junmyeon wouldn’t try to console him.
He shrugs. “That’s life, I suppose. Bad things happen.” Except Chanyeol knows better. But it hurts to say it out loud and he is tired of crying so he keeps his mouth shut. “Can I go now?”
After a while Junmyeon says, “Yes, of course.”
Chanyeol doesn’t look back after he stands up and exists the hospital through the main door.
**
He steps into the kitchen and finds that for the first time in his life, the present has no meaning. He eats a bowl of cereal and watches cartoons until he bores of it and decides to take a shower.
After that he goes inside his mother’s bedroom and strips her bed of all sheets and blankets and cushions and pushes it all inside a large trash bag. There are traces of blood on the mattress. Chanyeol sits on the bedroom floor for a while and cries until his throat begins to hurt.
Afterwards he flips the mattress and closes the door behind him.
Chanyeol calls Jongin but he is busy so Chanyeol spends the rest of the day alone reading books and listening to music. He is a bit on edge. The hospital left a bitter aftertaste behind and no matter how hard he tries to repress the whole experience, it persists on lingering.
He is living the lives of the bullets resting in the cartridge of the gun pointed to his head.
His phone rings around 6 PM. Chanyeol remembers the page he was on, closes the book and picks up.
“Hello?”
“Uh hi. This is Junmyeon from the hospital.” The reception is doing weird things to Junmyeon’s voice.
Chanyeol feels uncomfortable.
“Yes hello, Junmyeon. How may I help you? Is everything okay?”
“Yes of course. Your mother has been very cooperative and talkative as well.” Junmyeon laughs awkwardly into the phone and Chanyeol just wants to hang up and forget all about this.
“I’m actually calling you for another reason. I wanted to ask you if you were free next Saturday.”
Chanyeol blinks. Then holds the phone away from his ear and checks his screen. Then presses it against his ear again. “I don’t think I can follow.”
“I feel bad for what I said so I want to make peace. We could go to the cinema and watch a movie.”
Chanyeol looks out the window and disappointedly finds the world is as peaceful as it had been this morning. No zombie outbreak. Nothing. Weird. “Look… You really don’t have to do this. It’s okay. Really. No hard feelings.”
“Please? I’m twenty-four and have never said please before in my life. Please say yes. Save my pride.”
Chanyeol contemplates Junmyeon’s offer for a moment and tells himself, why the hell not.
“Okay, yes sure.”
Junmyeon screeches into the phone and laughs even louder and then the call is over.
Chanyeol receives a message from Junmyeon later.
^^ Don’t worry Chanyeol, we will have lots of fun!
**
It rained all Saturday long so Junmyeon wasn’t able to come last week but now he is standing in Jongin’s garage, eyeing Chanyeol’s Bentley funnily and suddenly it isn’t as much of a good idea as Chanyeol had originally thought. Junmyeon had wanted to go to the zoo but Chanyeol doesn’t like overcrowded places.
Chanyeol isn’t ashamed. Not exactly. He is just nervous, sweaty palms in his jean pockets while Junmyeon looks at the Bentley he and Jongin are working on. “I’m turning this guy pink.” Junmyeon only laughs quietly while running his hands over the dented hood.
“Where did you find him?”
“It was Jongin’s dad’s birthday present to me. He doesn’t want to tell me where he got him. The suspense is killing me.”
“He looks new… aside from the dents,” Junmyeon says.
“We are replacing the hood tomorrow. Then I’m repainting him and soon you’ll be able to see him making the streets unsafe.” Chanyeol presses his palms against his thighs and laughs nervously.
“You act kind of weird sometimes,” Junmyeon says after a moment. “Like you are expecting someone to jump at you.”
Chanyeol smiles awkwardly and changes the subject.
Junmyeon leaves after an hour and they promise to stay in contact. Somehow Chanyeol doubts they’ll see each other again.
**
That night he dreams that he is breathing fire and riding shotgun. And his sister is there too, hands gripping the steering wheel hard. And she is angry and Chanyeol doesn’t understand why. So she screams and screams louder and screams sadder and it all sounds like crying.
And suddenly there are trucks rolling down the road and he tries to protect her, because he owes her and he only got his shoulders. But the safety belt is in the way and it won’t come off and everything is in slow motion and the trucks aren’t stopping. And when the vehicles collide, everything bursts asunder, Chanyeol thinks, maybe this isn’t all that bad. Maybe there are fates worse than this.
Memories of Yura crumble between his fingers like dead foliage.
**
Chanyeol visits his mother every day. He mostly reads from books, or helps her eat and hums songs for her until she manages to fall asleep. He doesn’t see Junmyeon again and it bothers him more than it should.
“You look sad, Chanyeol,” his mother says, half asleep. Chanyeol would like to deny that. He is not sad. He is dealing with emotional baggage, that’s all. As soon as his mother is discharged and returns home Chanyeol is sure he’ll be fine again.
Is there another life, Chanyeol wonders, will he awake one day to find that things will have made more sense as the sun settles between the lashes of tomorrow and congests the streets with yesterday. He doesn’t know. But he figures there must be. How nice, to awake suddenly and find all pain was worth it.
**
Chanyeol buys textbooks that promise that he’ll be able to speak French fluently in only 2 weeks.
He spots Junmyeon a week before Christmas after reading his mother the second half of Pollyanna in the hospital canteen. His tongue sits heavy in mouth.
When Junmyeon sees Chanyeol he smiles widely. “Long time no see, Mr. Park.” Junmyeon still wears the golden nametag but now finds it more endearing than silly.
“Mind if I sit with you?”
Chanyeol shrugs and takes a sip from his coffee for dramatic effect.
“I’m glad you look better,” Junmyeon says after a while.
“I do?”
“You looked like you couldn’t swim.” Chanyeol looks at him weirdly before Junmyeon laughs into his hand. ”Sometimes,” Junmyeon says, “I feel as if I’m not living. Not really. I get this feeling now and then. And I’ve figured life is a bit like learning to swim. I guess we just have to jump into a lake and learn before we drown.”
“That sounds rather depressing,” Chanyeol says.
“Well… Try seeing it this way: Isn’t it better to burn than to burn out? Isn’t zeal better than utter apathy towards the world?”
“Not always,” Chanyeol says. “Sometimes it’s for the best if you don’t care that much about the world or anyone besides yourself.”
Before Chanyeol buried his family and began to sleep curled on the kitchen floor, air stale and heavy on his tongue, he used to have this stupid dream of living happy ever after the way they did in the movies. He believed that reliance and morality were socially integrated concepts in every human being. He realizes that not only was that painfully naïve, he now also has fallen out of love with the world and doesn’t know how to nurse a broken heart.
And it’s always about love. Even the cynics are in love with what turned them bitter.
Does he still have a heart?
What is functioning correctly?
Was there ever anything but the rattle of his incessantly stupid heart chasing its very own private song of life?
“It’s the same when people say they are sorry Yura died. People tell me-tell me that she’s at a better place, that she is fine and looking over me from above, sitting on some cloud with god and fifteen fucking angels and-
“And I can’t help but imagine, think of her, of Yura lying inside that coffin. And the thought that she is at peace now offers no comfort.” Junmyeon looks at Chanyeol. He looks at him as if looking at him for the first time, and he doesn’t know what to say.
Chanyeol wonders when he’s become so hateful.
Junmyeon says, “I will change that.”
And before Chanyeol can ask what he means, Junmyeon stands up and leaves.
**
Junmyeon glues himself to Chanyeol’s side whenever his job schedule allows it.
And Chanyeol allows Junmyeon to enter his life because maybe he is lonely and maybe he needs this.
Junmyeon is always there, always holding his hand.
He is starving for something to settle in his bones and shelter his soul the same way oxygen breathes life upon fire.
Love is an analogy we are afraid of turning into speech.
Junmyeon, Chanyeol learns, knocks on wood and avoids black cats and is afraid of mirrors. He lives in Gangnam-gu and would like to own a dog one day. He takes his job at the hospital very seriously and has the innate wish to help people. Sometimes Chanyeol doubts Junmyeon’s sincerity.
Memory refuse accumulates in the shadows of his room like dust and Chanyeol is always seeking the quiet on Junmyeon’s couch. They talk until deep into the night about things that are beyond Chanyeol and his constant fear for anything more fundamental. The wood floor in Junmyeon’s apartment creaks at night so they stick closer to another and murmur, hands pressed together underneath dense layers of cotton.
Everyone is always talking about letting go but Junmyeon understands that it isn’t so easy. Chanyeol thinks this is what love feels like sometimes when they wake up and find that they’ve fallen asleep together on the couch. The feeling never lasts. Chanyeol isn’t sure why.
**
Chanyeol wakes up one day, head resting on Junmyeon’s lap, and it occurs to him that something isn’t quite right. He feels restless.
He looks at Junmyeon for a while then stands up and collects everything he owns inside a small suitcase he decided to bring with him to Junmyeon’s apartment. Junnmyeon hadn’t minded, instead had been excited.
Chanyeol takes his toothbrush in the bathroom and remembers how Junmyeon had helped him dye his hair pink. There are still dark blotches of dye on the porcelain that will probably never wash away.
Junmyeon doesn’t say anything, just watches Chanyeol quietly like he had expected this.
There is something about Junmyeon that makes him look distant. Perhaps it’s the way he is sitting on the couch, legs crosses, eyes dark. He’s been sitting there for a while. Thinking. The way he always does. Sun presses between thick curtains and under the vague light Chanyeol can see shadows ghost over Junmyeon’s sharp features.
Somehow Junmyeon looks skeletal.
There is a second of reluctance manifested in his limbs, hands gripping the door handle instead of his suitcase filled with nothing but clothes. He won’t take yesterday with him.
“I admit at some point I wanted us to be more,” Junmyeon says. “But alas, this is where we part. I do not feel sad. I hope you aren’t either. Goodbyes give room to new hellos.”
Junmyeon speaks of the past and it frightens Chanyeol. Because Junmyeon outgrows love the way Chanyeol outgrew sweaters and football shorts.
Chanyeol shakes his head slowly and then kneels before Junmyeon.
"What do you want, Chanyeol?" That's a good question Chanyeol has no concrete
answer to. He hasn't reached home yet. Or peace. He is his sister's ambitions she wasn't able to take to grave with her.
What else does he want? Chanyeol wants agony, perhaps a look of utter devastation. Because he'll know it to be genuine. But the man that stands before him, hands furled into fists like angry waves coiling against gravity and sand, he looks more like vivacity captured and lacquered than the man he fell in love with.
He wants nothing. Not really. This is not his story and he is not the main protagonist.
He is utterly and profoundly frightened of feeling too much. Of admitting to himself that he is complex and so very alike his mother. There is a minute’s worth of hesitation on his lips before he mumbles, “I just want you.” So Junmyeon traces with his lips every branching of life weaved into his skin. For that moment that is enough. Chanyeol does not wish for more.
Chanyeol can say I Love You in French and his hair ends are pink and the pink Bentley in his garage Chanyeol worked so hard on is still there. He thinks one of these days he’ll have to force Junmyeon to kiss him in the rain. But that’s okay. Junmyeon seems to be a romantic anyway.
They are lying on the living room floor together, pressed against another as the night settles over Seoul like fog upon the morning.
And life goes on. And Chanyeol is fine with that.
1.) Own a pink Bentley.
2.) Learn French. i>J’aime!!!
3.) Be kissed in the rain.
4.) Dye hair pink.
5.) Make sure Chanyeol is happy. JUNYEOL <3 ← so gross
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3.9k
Summary: "What do you want, Chanyeol?" That's a good question Chanyeol has no concrete answer to. He hasn't reached home yet. Or peace. He is his sister's ambitions she wasn't able to take to grave with her.
Warning/s: character death, attempted suicide (this is not a sad story)
Yura dies at age twenty-four.
A ghost driver loses control over his car, veers violently out of the right lane and crashes into her Fiat at 5 AM. She was driving home.
What follows is a sequence of happenings revolving around Chanyeol’s family and his everyday life gradually crumbling to dust. His sister is buried six feet underground, with only her granite tombstone to heed her name, her smile, and her words of advice when Chanyeol wasn’t sure who he was. The stone underneath his fingers feels cold and becomes just a mocking reminder that she is dead. And that the dead stay dead.
Two autumns pass by, stain and break and Chanyeol abides by the inane notion he lives in a warm house.
**
Yura used to ask, “What do you expect from life?”
Chanyeol expected to be stuck in Busan forever. He expected to nurse his mother until she eventually succumbed to her age. He also expected to see Yura become a big name. Unreachable. Unsayable. Someone people would talk about in awe. There weren’t many things Chanyeol was looking forward to, mostly because there is only so much you can turn into poetry, but watching his sister become greater than himself was one of the things Chanyeol couldn’t wait to witness.
“I don’t expect much,” Chanyeol would lastly say.
**
Chanyeol and his mother used to live in a small apartment in Geoje, but when Yura got a job in Seoul as estate broker, they moved with her. Chanyeol had been fifteen then.
Chanyeol hasn’t been inside his sister’s room for weeks. It’s still as pink as he remember it being before she died. And it’s silly to assume something would change. He thought all color would have been gone, like she took every last bit of life with her when she died. He sits on her bed for a while, looks over her desk, flower shaped carpet, and white wardrobe. She had always been a big fan of SHINee, the poster is still there, glued to wood. Chanyeol doesn’t want to cry but the tears come anyway. He thinks of all the times they fought over the stupidest things and he regrets it so much he almost chokes on it. He rests his head on her pillow that still smells like her but he finds it to be oddly hard. He uprights himself and takes the pillow in his hands and then he notices a book the size of his closed fist underneath it.
He feels a bit guilty but opens what he assumes to be her diary, anyway.
5 THINGS I VOW TO DO BEFORE DYING
Chanyeol swallows hard.
1.) Own a pink Bentley.
2.) Learn French.
3.) Be kissed in the rain.
4.) Dye his hair pink.
5.) Make sure Chanyeol is happy.
**
His mother has locked herself inside her bedroom since the funeral and Chanyeol has taken an indefinite hiatus from university to look after her and the house.
Chanyeol peels off his jeans with the intention of taking a shower and discovers a line of scar that begins on his left hip and stops in the inside of his thigh. He can’t remember what could have caused the scar, nor why it’s so oddly placed. He wonders. He never takes a shower, instead puts his jeans inside the wash machine and sits in front of his mother’s bedroom door. He sits there for a while, hands resting on his bare thighs, butt on the carpeted floor. He thinks of what to say, but reaches the conclusion that he has not a clue how to comfort a mother. She has a right to mourn. But she’s been mourning for two days and Chanyeol thinks that can’t be quite normal.
Sadness is wuthering. Grief is worse. It’s like living in perpetual downpour, wind leaning against skin and knocking over every calendar sheet. Depression lacks a sense of time and so his mother is caught in the maelstrom of cessation.
He knocks against the door and already knows she won’t open so he lies down and finds the hallway is too narrow for him to stretch his legs and instead leans them against the wall.
He lies there for a long time, thinking, breathing, hairy legs up in the air.
Chanyeol’s father had been a car enthusiast. He would take Chanyeol to motor shows and urge him to take pictures of the cars presented he liked the most. At the end of the day they’d talk about the pictures they both had taken and cars and Chanyeol, if he is honest with himself, misses that the most.
Jongin’s father runs a car repair shop in Incheon. Chanyeol used to work part-time there once a week to earn his own pocket money to buy teenager nonsense and impress the girls that lived in his neighborhood. That was before he realized that he didn’t like girls all that much.
Sometimes it’s not even the trips that make the most of his father’s absence but the parental figure that was taken from him before he reached his late teens. His mother had always been emotionally unstable; always stumbling towards the future, always barely hanging on. Yet his father stabilized her in ways that are not possible for Chanyeol. Because at the end of the day he is just an unemployed university dropout.
He knocks again.
Complete silence.
He takes a deep breath before standing up and getting the master key that is inside the cookie jar in the kitchen that hasn’t been used to store cookies since Chanyeol was sixteen. She hasn’t eaten nor drunken anything since last night. His hands are trembling so it takes him a few tries before he is able to unlock the door.
Chanyeol has seen his mother do many reckless things during his childhood. After his father died she tried to find a semblance of love at the bottom of whiskey glasses. Yura knew how to handle that side of her, Chanyeol doesn’t. It had always been Yura who pushed his mother under the shower and clothed her afterwards. Chanyeol didn’t know how to offer her any comfort. They all were grieving. Perhaps he had always been just bitter his mother was the one the privilege of mourning was allotted to.
He is not prepared to see what lies behind the door to his mother’s bedroom.
Chanyeol runs to his room and tosses aside the blanket, cushions, fumbles with his jacket in search of his cellphone and it only is a matter of seconds but to him it takes awfully long until he is able to call for help.
He finds his mother on her bed with galled red lines on each of her wrists.
She’s unresponsive.
**
His mother is hospitalized and Chanyeol holds her hand throughout it all. He holds her hand inside the ambulance while she’s crying and screaming and asking why Chanyeol is doing this to her. And he holds her hand while the doctor sticks needles in her arms until she goes limp and stops crying.
It’s not all that bad, he thinks. People will care for her here.
The hospital looks nice from afar and there are yellow poppies inside a clear glass vase on the bedside table beside his mother’s bed. The sheets are clean and the blinds have been drawn so sun shines inside her room and his mother will like it here. She just needs time. Because she is sad and confused. And that’s the core problem.
**
Chanyeol has never bought candy from a vending machine before. But as he chews and swallows he finds that it doesn’t taste any different from the candy he sometimes buys at the convenience store near the house he shares with his mother. He had found ten thousand won in his jeans pocket and now regrets having inserted it into the vending machine because he still has to catch the train back home.
He is eyeing a pack of M&Ms, hands pressed against the thick glass front when someone approaches him. “Park Chanyeol?”
All the doctors and hospital personnel he has dealt with so far have been old so Chanyeol is surprised to see a young man inside a white coat before him holding a clipboard.
“I have a few questions. You are free to go leave afterwards.” White coat guy says while sitting down on one of the orange plastic chairs in the hallway.
“Uh, so… was it common for--,” White coat guy stops and looks at Chanyeol oddly. “Could you sit down? You are making me nervous.” Chanyeol sits next to him and White coat guy looks pleased and proceeds. Chanyeol can make out the name ‘Kim Junmyeon’ on the golden nametag pinned to the breast pocket of his white coat. The name sounds a bit silly to Chanyeol but he doesn’t say that.
“Okay, Hi. I’m not yet Doctor Kim so Junmyeon will do,” White coat guy says while smiling and Chanyeol takes that as a good sign for him to relax. “I still have five years of residency before me but here I am. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you. My name is Chanyeol.”
Junmyeon laughs before taking a pen from his breast pocket and focusing on his clipboard. “Does Mrs. Park have any allergies?”
“No food allergies.”
“What about medicaments?”
Chanyeol shakes his head after a moment. “I don’t think so.” Junmyeon nods.
“Has Mrs. Park showed signs of depression before?”
“She… She isn’t crazy,” Chanyeol takes a deep breath before looking down at his lap. “She is just sad. She went through a lot after my sister died.” Chanyeol can hear paper rustling and then the hollow sound of something scraping on wood. “I’m sorry for your loss, Chanyeol.” Junmyeon sounds sincere but Chanyeol would rather Junmyeon wouldn’t try to console him.
He shrugs. “That’s life, I suppose. Bad things happen.” Except Chanyeol knows better. But it hurts to say it out loud and he is tired of crying so he keeps his mouth shut. “Can I go now?”
After a while Junmyeon says, “Yes, of course.”
Chanyeol doesn’t look back after he stands up and exists the hospital through the main door.
**
He steps into the kitchen and finds that for the first time in his life, the present has no meaning. He eats a bowl of cereal and watches cartoons until he bores of it and decides to take a shower.
After that he goes inside his mother’s bedroom and strips her bed of all sheets and blankets and cushions and pushes it all inside a large trash bag. There are traces of blood on the mattress. Chanyeol sits on the bedroom floor for a while and cries until his throat begins to hurt.
Afterwards he flips the mattress and closes the door behind him.
Chanyeol calls Jongin but he is busy so Chanyeol spends the rest of the day alone reading books and listening to music. He is a bit on edge. The hospital left a bitter aftertaste behind and no matter how hard he tries to repress the whole experience, it persists on lingering.
He is living the lives of the bullets resting in the cartridge of the gun pointed to his head.
His phone rings around 6 PM. Chanyeol remembers the page he was on, closes the book and picks up.
“Hello?”
“Uh hi. This is Junmyeon from the hospital.” The reception is doing weird things to Junmyeon’s voice.
Chanyeol feels uncomfortable.
“Yes hello, Junmyeon. How may I help you? Is everything okay?”
“Yes of course. Your mother has been very cooperative and talkative as well.” Junmyeon laughs awkwardly into the phone and Chanyeol just wants to hang up and forget all about this.
“I’m actually calling you for another reason. I wanted to ask you if you were free next Saturday.”
Chanyeol blinks. Then holds the phone away from his ear and checks his screen. Then presses it against his ear again. “I don’t think I can follow.”
“I feel bad for what I said so I want to make peace. We could go to the cinema and watch a movie.”
Chanyeol looks out the window and disappointedly finds the world is as peaceful as it had been this morning. No zombie outbreak. Nothing. Weird. “Look… You really don’t have to do this. It’s okay. Really. No hard feelings.”
“Please? I’m twenty-four and have never said please before in my life. Please say yes. Save my pride.”
Chanyeol contemplates Junmyeon’s offer for a moment and tells himself, why the hell not.
“Okay, yes sure.”
Junmyeon screeches into the phone and laughs even louder and then the call is over.
Chanyeol receives a message from Junmyeon later.
^^ Don’t worry Chanyeol, we will have lots of fun!
**
It rained all Saturday long so Junmyeon wasn’t able to come last week but now he is standing in Jongin’s garage, eyeing Chanyeol’s Bentley funnily and suddenly it isn’t as much of a good idea as Chanyeol had originally thought. Junmyeon had wanted to go to the zoo but Chanyeol doesn’t like overcrowded places.
Chanyeol isn’t ashamed. Not exactly. He is just nervous, sweaty palms in his jean pockets while Junmyeon looks at the Bentley he and Jongin are working on. “I’m turning this guy pink.” Junmyeon only laughs quietly while running his hands over the dented hood.
“Where did you find him?”
“It was Jongin’s dad’s birthday present to me. He doesn’t want to tell me where he got him. The suspense is killing me.”
“He looks new… aside from the dents,” Junmyeon says.
“We are replacing the hood tomorrow. Then I’m repainting him and soon you’ll be able to see him making the streets unsafe.” Chanyeol presses his palms against his thighs and laughs nervously.
“You act kind of weird sometimes,” Junmyeon says after a moment. “Like you are expecting someone to jump at you.”
Chanyeol smiles awkwardly and changes the subject.
Junmyeon leaves after an hour and they promise to stay in contact. Somehow Chanyeol doubts they’ll see each other again.
**
That night he dreams that he is breathing fire and riding shotgun. And his sister is there too, hands gripping the steering wheel hard. And she is angry and Chanyeol doesn’t understand why. So she screams and screams louder and screams sadder and it all sounds like crying.
And suddenly there are trucks rolling down the road and he tries to protect her, because he owes her and he only got his shoulders. But the safety belt is in the way and it won’t come off and everything is in slow motion and the trucks aren’t stopping. And when the vehicles collide, everything bursts asunder, Chanyeol thinks, maybe this isn’t all that bad. Maybe there are fates worse than this.
Memories of Yura crumble between his fingers like dead foliage.
**
Chanyeol visits his mother every day. He mostly reads from books, or helps her eat and hums songs for her until she manages to fall asleep. He doesn’t see Junmyeon again and it bothers him more than it should.
“You look sad, Chanyeol,” his mother says, half asleep. Chanyeol would like to deny that. He is not sad. He is dealing with emotional baggage, that’s all. As soon as his mother is discharged and returns home Chanyeol is sure he’ll be fine again.
Is there another life, Chanyeol wonders, will he awake one day to find that things will have made more sense as the sun settles between the lashes of tomorrow and congests the streets with yesterday. He doesn’t know. But he figures there must be. How nice, to awake suddenly and find all pain was worth it.
**
Chanyeol buys textbooks that promise that he’ll be able to speak French fluently in only 2 weeks.
He spots Junmyeon a week before Christmas after reading his mother the second half of Pollyanna in the hospital canteen. His tongue sits heavy in mouth.
When Junmyeon sees Chanyeol he smiles widely. “Long time no see, Mr. Park.” Junmyeon still wears the golden nametag but now finds it more endearing than silly.
“Mind if I sit with you?”
Chanyeol shrugs and takes a sip from his coffee for dramatic effect.
“I’m glad you look better,” Junmyeon says after a while.
“I do?”
“You looked like you couldn’t swim.” Chanyeol looks at him weirdly before Junmyeon laughs into his hand. ”Sometimes,” Junmyeon says, “I feel as if I’m not living. Not really. I get this feeling now and then. And I’ve figured life is a bit like learning to swim. I guess we just have to jump into a lake and learn before we drown.”
“That sounds rather depressing,” Chanyeol says.
“Well… Try seeing it this way: Isn’t it better to burn than to burn out? Isn’t zeal better than utter apathy towards the world?”
“Not always,” Chanyeol says. “Sometimes it’s for the best if you don’t care that much about the world or anyone besides yourself.”
Before Chanyeol buried his family and began to sleep curled on the kitchen floor, air stale and heavy on his tongue, he used to have this stupid dream of living happy ever after the way they did in the movies. He believed that reliance and morality were socially integrated concepts in every human being. He realizes that not only was that painfully naïve, he now also has fallen out of love with the world and doesn’t know how to nurse a broken heart.
And it’s always about love. Even the cynics are in love with what turned them bitter.
Does he still have a heart?
What is functioning correctly?
Was there ever anything but the rattle of his incessantly stupid heart chasing its very own private song of life?
“It’s the same when people say they are sorry Yura died. People tell me-tell me that she’s at a better place, that she is fine and looking over me from above, sitting on some cloud with god and fifteen fucking angels and-
“And I can’t help but imagine, think of her, of Yura lying inside that coffin. And the thought that she is at peace now offers no comfort.” Junmyeon looks at Chanyeol. He looks at him as if looking at him for the first time, and he doesn’t know what to say.
Chanyeol wonders when he’s become so hateful.
Junmyeon says, “I will change that.”
And before Chanyeol can ask what he means, Junmyeon stands up and leaves.
**
Junmyeon glues himself to Chanyeol’s side whenever his job schedule allows it.
And Chanyeol allows Junmyeon to enter his life because maybe he is lonely and maybe he needs this.
Junmyeon is always there, always holding his hand.
He is starving for something to settle in his bones and shelter his soul the same way oxygen breathes life upon fire.
Love is an analogy we are afraid of turning into speech.
Junmyeon, Chanyeol learns, knocks on wood and avoids black cats and is afraid of mirrors. He lives in Gangnam-gu and would like to own a dog one day. He takes his job at the hospital very seriously and has the innate wish to help people. Sometimes Chanyeol doubts Junmyeon’s sincerity.
Memory refuse accumulates in the shadows of his room like dust and Chanyeol is always seeking the quiet on Junmyeon’s couch. They talk until deep into the night about things that are beyond Chanyeol and his constant fear for anything more fundamental. The wood floor in Junmyeon’s apartment creaks at night so they stick closer to another and murmur, hands pressed together underneath dense layers of cotton.
Everyone is always talking about letting go but Junmyeon understands that it isn’t so easy. Chanyeol thinks this is what love feels like sometimes when they wake up and find that they’ve fallen asleep together on the couch. The feeling never lasts. Chanyeol isn’t sure why.
**
Chanyeol wakes up one day, head resting on Junmyeon’s lap, and it occurs to him that something isn’t quite right. He feels restless.
He looks at Junmyeon for a while then stands up and collects everything he owns inside a small suitcase he decided to bring with him to Junmyeon’s apartment. Junnmyeon hadn’t minded, instead had been excited.
Chanyeol takes his toothbrush in the bathroom and remembers how Junmyeon had helped him dye his hair pink. There are still dark blotches of dye on the porcelain that will probably never wash away.
Junmyeon doesn’t say anything, just watches Chanyeol quietly like he had expected this.
There is something about Junmyeon that makes him look distant. Perhaps it’s the way he is sitting on the couch, legs crosses, eyes dark. He’s been sitting there for a while. Thinking. The way he always does. Sun presses between thick curtains and under the vague light Chanyeol can see shadows ghost over Junmyeon’s sharp features.
Somehow Junmyeon looks skeletal.
There is a second of reluctance manifested in his limbs, hands gripping the door handle instead of his suitcase filled with nothing but clothes. He won’t take yesterday with him.
“I admit at some point I wanted us to be more,” Junmyeon says. “But alas, this is where we part. I do not feel sad. I hope you aren’t either. Goodbyes give room to new hellos.”
Junmyeon speaks of the past and it frightens Chanyeol. Because Junmyeon outgrows love the way Chanyeol outgrew sweaters and football shorts.
Chanyeol shakes his head slowly and then kneels before Junmyeon.
"What do you want, Chanyeol?" That's a good question Chanyeol has no concrete
answer to. He hasn't reached home yet. Or peace. He is his sister's ambitions she wasn't able to take to grave with her.
What else does he want? Chanyeol wants agony, perhaps a look of utter devastation. Because he'll know it to be genuine. But the man that stands before him, hands furled into fists like angry waves coiling against gravity and sand, he looks more like vivacity captured and lacquered than the man he fell in love with.
He wants nothing. Not really. This is not his story and he is not the main protagonist.
He is utterly and profoundly frightened of feeling too much. Of admitting to himself that he is complex and so very alike his mother. There is a minute’s worth of hesitation on his lips before he mumbles, “I just want you.” So Junmyeon traces with his lips every branching of life weaved into his skin. For that moment that is enough. Chanyeol does not wish for more.
Chanyeol can say I Love You in French and his hair ends are pink and the pink Bentley in his garage Chanyeol worked so hard on is still there. He thinks one of these days he’ll have to force Junmyeon to kiss him in the rain. But that’s okay. Junmyeon seems to be a romantic anyway.
They are lying on the living room floor together, pressed against another as the night settles over Seoul like fog upon the morning.
And life goes on. And Chanyeol is fine with that.
1.) Own a pink Bentley.
2.) Learn French. i>J’aime!!!
3.) Be kissed in the rain.
4.) Dye hair pink.
5.) Make sure Chanyeol is happy. JUNYEOL <3 ← so gross