APTF [10/13]
Chapter Ten
He remembers nothing of his childhood but sickness: constant fevers, delirium and coughing fits in the night. He remembers a lot of crying, of hands holding his face in the dark to coax him to eat, of tears falling like rain on his cheeks and hugs of a mother whose face he’s forgotten, to keep him warm. I’m sorry, is the last thing he hears from her before a long restful sleep claims him, and when he wakes finally, another woman has taken her place. A woman he knows he’s never known, but who holds him and fondles him as though he’d been always hers, who tucks him under the starched white blankets in the hospital and whose tears drizzle upon his lips as bitter salt.
Who are you, he asks, too weak to move but not stupid enough to realize that she is a stranger.
Don’t you remember me, Jaejoongah? She says, and he knows she’s been crying for a long time. It’s Mommy. It’s Mommy, sweetie, don’t you remember? It’s me.
He’s about to say no, about to back away from her touch but she holds him down with a soft hand and a wet smile. You were sick for a long time. It’s okay, the doctors have said you’re going to be fine. You’ll remember eventually, sweetie, don’t worry, it takes some time.
But I’m not…he says and attempts to pronounce his name, the name he knows is his, when the woman shushes him by placing a finger onto his lips. Don’t overexcite yourself, darling. Do you know how scared I was while you were sick? Let yourself recover first.
And even without him wanting her to, she lies down beside him on the bed, holds him close to her, humming a lullaby under her breath.
Do you remember this, Jaejoong? I used to sing it to you when you were a baby. You loved it; it always put you right to sleep. Do you remember? Darling? Sweetie?
But he doesn’t remember, the tone always unfamiliar to him as the odd syllables of the name that’s supposed to be his.
Jaejoong. Jaejoong. Jaejoong.
---
It’s cold the day Jaejoong disappears (3 since Yoochun had come home, 7 since he had last returned), and Yunho wakes to the sound of a lullaby echoing in his ears, the last few wisps of a dream he can’t really remember. The sun enters the bedroom in shafts through the shades pulled down the windows like uneven eyelids, and from beside him, he feels Yoochun stir, burrowing deeper into the soft sheets like a nesting cub. Like what greets him on many mornings, Jaejoong’s side of the bed is empty, but unlike most of those days, there’s a feeling that gnaws on his stomach raw, leaving a hole he knows shouldn’t be there.
“Jae…?” he mumbles the first time, the only time. There are no pots banging in the kitchen, no nameless tune being hummed, no movement being heard beyond the bedroom doors. Yunho tenses as the safe cocoon of sleep and dreams is pulled away, the silence holding the apartment hostage stabbing it and ripping it open in a most disconcerting way.
(What if I told you I don’t exist?)
He doesn’t call out Jaejoong’s name, but automatically searches the apartment barefoot for any sign, any clue of what had been Jaejoong’s presence or of why he’s gone, walking at first before quickly breaking out into a jog. He refuses to believe what instinct is telling him (No, he couldn’t have, he couldn’t, he couldn’t) and so doors are opened and rooms overturned, but there is no note, no extra pair of shoes by the door, no other clothes in his closet aside from his own, no paint-splattered coat hanging on the rack. The paintings that have been piling up by the sofa have gone, and it takes Yunho several more minutes of thorough searching before he discovers the disappearance of all of Jaejoong’s pictures from his laptop and camera, upon realizing that they aren’t actually where he had last left them (since when could things walk from desks to the middle of the dining-room table?). Stray pictures he had developed of Jaejoong have also gone, snatched blind from the walls of his darkroom, leaving empty spaces between Yoochun’s puckered lips and New York’s gray city skyline, and it’s there that Yunho rams a fist onto the wall, his breath starting to hitch and his chest beginning to tighten as realization hit him like a ten-wheeler truck.
“Bastard,” Yunho whispers, tears stinging his eyes. He doesn’t need the confirmation of a note; it’s all very clear. “You bastard. You bastard. You bastard.”
(I’d believe anything you say.)
---
I have baggage, he remembers telling Yunho once after he’s sure they’re done with that fearful first step. That day had been unnaturally warm and the two of them had spent it at the park underneath a dried-out elm, watching as Junsu taught Yoochun how to play (and cheat at) soccer.
I have secrets too, you know, Yunho had replied. So quit stealing the spotlight.
You don’t understand…
He had almost told him, had been nearly crushed by the temptation to do so, but he had bit his tongue at the last minute, had decided his dreams, his secret, could wait for a better time, for a more opportune moment.
What don’t I understand?
…Nothing.
He runs the entire way back to his apartment, back to the unnamed little corner that he had once been so proud to call his own. The moment he arrives, all his belongings that he had collected from the Jungs’ (a place he had been foolish enough to call home) land in a messy pile by the door: tubes of paint exploding like fireworks across the floorboards, brushes and pencils waltzing in air before hitting the ground, the pictures he had filched from Yunho’s walls cascading towards his feet like leaves in autumn. His knees give way not even a step later and he lets himself fold up into a ball on the floor, unable to move or speak or cry (ironic, now that he’s surrounded by his own smiles and laughter, worn as though by a different person, captured in a different time), not quite believing what he has just done but knowing deep inside of him that there really is no better way.
(I love you, Yunho had told him and had kissed him, his lips caramel-soft. I promise I’ll love your baggage too, whatever it is.)
Fate had always been cruel to him.
---
Yoochun draws each day that passes by without Jaejoong, filling the remaining days of his recovery period as fast as he fills sheet after sheet of butcher paper with rocket ships, dinosaurs and pirates, as well as with the five of them all together, colored blobs and blocks with messy smiles drawn across their faces. He had searched at first for Jaejoong, missing the warmth his body had offered when cuddled up next to him on Yunho’s bed, missing the steady meals (although they were ones he had always blatantly refused to eat, especially if it was red and Korean) that had provided for them a (false) sense of security, often bombarding Yunho with questions he [Yunho] could not (or dared not) answer. Thankfully, Changmin and Junsu are quick to fill in for Jaejoong’s absence and Yunho’s distance, offering themselves as distractions slash punching bags by bringing in Happy meals, candy bars and Disney tapes to help veer Yoochun’s attention away from the matter; Changmin also sings songs and starts teaching Yoochun some of the lessons he’s been missing out in school, and Junsu often sits down on the floor to draw or help Yoochun crash cars into each other. It’s successful at times, and much to Yunho’s relief, Yoochun is able to forget and doesn’t ask.
(Please stay, he remembers saying, begging even. Don’t leave.)
Cigarettes become his constant companions and when he knows Yoochun is safe with Changmin and Junsu, Yunho excuses himself for long walks up and down the block. Five days past and he’s still hoping, if only for a little bit, keeping his eyes peeled for the familiar hunch of Jaejoong’s shoulders in the cold, for the distinctive coat Jaejoong always insisted on wearing. Muddy boots clomping on the pavement. Paint-stained fingers dancing on air, conducting an invisible orchestra. A worn portfolio being swung from side to side.
(Please)
Two days, then five, then seven. Yoochun returns to school and comes home no longer crying. Junsu has gotten into the habit of buying their meals for them and leaving them at the apartment (because God forbid none of them can cook and no one can actually let Yoochun starve). Changmin babysits regularly despite school and keeps Yoochun company because he knows Yunho can’t. He’s stopped strangers in their tracks several times, has yelled Jaejoong’s name among a crowd in the hopes that he would stop, turn around, and he always imagines that at that point, he could (would) forgive Jaejoong for his inability to settle. But no one does, and Yunho always makes his way back to the apartment, mute, volatile, only forcing a small smile when confronted by or with Yoochun, but reserving the expression for no one else. The tiny glimmer of hope has gone.
(I told you, didn’t I? He can almost hear Jaejoong saying, a whisper so close the hairs on his neck stand on end. I can’t offer any promises)
“Don’t worry hyung, he’ll come back,” Yoochun tells him confidently, possessing an air Yunho never thought a six-year-old could pull off. His words fill in the horrible suffocating silence that’s developed between the two of them, stop suspended in air like rain clouds over their half-eaten (and quickly growing cold) dinner. “He always does.”
(He had overestimated Jaejoong)
“Finish your food.” Yunho doesn’t look up, doesn’t meet Yoochun’s eyes. He dismisses the matter quickly, dust swept under the rug. “Finish your food, then go to bed. You still have school tomorrow.”
(Live. Move on. Let go. Even though he knows he can’t)
---
The news articles are kept in an old Adidas shoebox he’s shoved to the darkest corner of his closet. It’s his odd little collection, a macabre hobby: photocopying article after article, cutting them up into neat little blocks of print before stuffing them one by one into the box, away from his mother’s sight. He knew she would have never approved of it; it was, after all, proof of the hearsay he had been hearing about her and her supposed son-him, but once upon a time there had been another him-, proving just how small a place, even one as large as Seoul, is, proving just how you can never escape anything, especially not a past you force to keep in the dark.
Don’t you ever believe what they say, she had used to tell him. I have the papers, the pictures. I was the one who had given birth to you. Who are they to tell you whom you are and whom you’re not?
It had caught up with him anyway, had managed to find him and his mother in their house on the southernmost tip of Cheongnam, several years after moving out of Seoul, several years after pretending to be someone he knows he’s not. (Odd name, Jaejoong, the old man had said. Are you sure you haven’t heard of that accident? It was some years back. Eerie that you share the same name with a dead boy.)
They’re all lies, she would always say. Umma wouldn’t tell you lies, would she? Forget all this, Jaejoong, it’s utter nonsense.
He finds the name in more than one of the articles. Back then, it had meant nothing, just a faceless name among many others, a suspect in one account, an accomplice in another. But now he follows each name he’s encircled in red, feeling a twinge in his heart every time he does so. He had hoped his memory had been wrong (after all it’s been a while since he last read these thoroughly), that it could have been another name, another person, but three characters stare back at him in the same arrangement, mocking him, pokes through his heart and lungs like pitchforks and makes it harder for him to breathe.
(It can’t be you, he had said the first time he noticed, surely it isn’t.)
He keeps silent this time, and the articles are thrown back into the box with shaking fingers and hastily kicked to the side. The contents spill like dead leaves, rustling, scratching on the floorboards with their yellowed edges.
(It can’t be. It can’t be.)
He covers his face with his hands. He’d known it all along.
---
Junsu has him doing freelance jobs to distract him while Yoochun is at school, volunteering him for various portraits and company ads. Yunho is indignant but gets each job done, swiftly, effortlessly, just to save them from embarrassment. Clients are impressed with the results, of course, and so is Junsu but Yunho scoffs, finding no reason for their enjoyment, knowing how each work is devoid of any emotion, of any passion he’s always had the pleasure of putting in. He refuses work at the nth request, waves Junsu away without batting an eyelash, and tells him in the simplest way possible that he doesn’t want to.
He’s not coming back, hyung! Junsu yells, red-faced and frustrated. He blocks the doorway to Yunho’s bedroom, and Yunho fights the urge to hit him. He’s left you!
Mind your own fucking business! He yells back, the first time he’s ever done to Junsu. He regrets it after, but the hurt and anger is overwhelming him and proves to be too powerful.
You can’t do this. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. To Yoochun. Goddamn it, learn to live!
(It’s an echo of something he’s heard before: You just live, goddamnit; you’ve no excuse)
YUNHO! JUNG YUNHO!
(It was too easy to fucking say.)
---
The call couldn’t have come in at a better time.
She’s dead, the man on the other line says without so much as a greeting, are you happy now? Are you happy now Jaejoong that your mother has died with your name on her lips? You ungrateful bastard. She took care of you and this is how you treat her, you undeserving son of a bitch. She loved you. She loved you so much-
Silence floods the apartment once more. His chest is hollow as he gets back to bed, and he casts the cut phone cord to the side, biting his lip and trying his best not to cry. Part of him feels he should be relieved, happy even, to be finally freed of obligation, of being constantly watched and guarded like a caged animal. He had hoped that, by escaping two of the only things he’s ever loved and hated, the two things that have managed to keep him afloat yet at the same time drown him, would save him from all this heartache.
But his heart is suddenly lonelier than it has ever been, beating less to keep him alive than to provide him with pain he needs none more of.
(Even in dreams he isn’t spared, and for the past few nights he’s one of the boys at the river, the runt of the lot, and he follows dancing circles of light, does his best to try and keep up. One minute he’s there and the next he’s cold and alone, shivering in the darkness, rivers down his cheeks, whispering someone’s name over and over)
I love you, he says softly, although he isn’t quite sure to whom, and a tear escapes him anyway, accompanying the soft moan he lets himself release as he curls up amidst mountains of dream-soaked sheets, wishing for the nth time that he could disappear.
---
Changmin helps him install the punching bag in his apartment one night after they’ve put Yoochun to bed and Yunho is thankful at his pretense to not notice that anything is wrong. Yunho can feel as the younger boy looks at him wide-eyed the first time he lets his fists rain down on the punching bag, resulting in bruised hands and friction-burnt fingers that Changmin holds gently in his own the second Yunho lets himself collapse forward, land on his knees, sweating, panting, gasping, and oh so angry.
“Hyung…” Changmin says, and there’s a hint of fear in his tone.
“Don’t tell Junsu,” Yunho says, looking up at him through sweaty hair, the salt stinging his eyes but he doesn’t care. “I mean it, Changmin.”
And Changmin stays silent for the rest of his stay, muttering only quiet “I’m sorry”s in between Yunho’s hissing, as he dabs at Yunho’s hands and fingers with ointment, looking the entire time as though he’d rather be somewhere else.
---
One more week and he lives like a shadow, reduced to just a being lying formless on his bed, plagued by constant headaches from lack of sleep and possibly too much thought, only getting up to shovel a spoonful of rice down his throat at random intervals, just to keep him from becoming too physically spent. The sun is kept out by thick curtains drawn over the large windows, and inside the apartment he can never tell if it’s morning or not, but it’s not as though it would make a difference to him anyway.
He’s having the same dream again. River, forest, laughter. A blur of legs and faces, hands rushing past branches that claw at their skin and moistened grass that make their sneakers slip. This time, however, he can discern voices, high and trembling in the wind.
(Something to show you, really, we swear)
A boy with raven hair and a nervous smile. Jaejoong, he says in a way that strikes him as familiar. Their hands touch, and their feet reach water, following the lead of the other boy, the bigger one, towards the deeper end.
The splash surprises him and he sees the bigger boy has suddenly gone, has suddenly disappeared underneath the roar of the river rushing past their legs. The other boy yells in surprise, lets go of his hand, and hurries over to the spot where his brother had been. Hyung! The boy shouts. HYUNG-
A hand shoots out, grabs the boy’s arm, and it takes Jaejoong a second to realize that it’s his. The other boy looks at him in surprise (Jaejoong what-) but a strength and intention that isn’t his own has the other boy suddenly pinned face first into the water, struggling in his hold, releasing an eruption of bubbles from unheard screams onto the surface.
No! he wants to shout, horrified, wants to stop himself, wants to free the other boy from his grasp but he’s mute and powerless, suddenly reduced to being a mere observer only trapped in someone else’s body. His limbs don’t obey him but his mind is screaming, horror digging deep into his throat like glass shards.
Let him go, let him go please, let him go
He attempts to struggle, but is kept in place by an unseen force. He’s seeing, feeling, hearing everything. The water is up to his chest and his knees are pressed hard onto the other boy’s back. He can feel the other boy thrashing from underneath him, trapped like an animal, can feel the bits of sand and rock grazing his skin from the boy’s persistent movement. He attempts to scream but nothing comes out.
Here’s the fun part now, a voice inside of him says, a voice he’s sure he’s never heard before. You get to watch him die.
(And somewhere in Seoul, a scream sounds in an apartment housing only one occupant, before it is quickly cut off by a crack caused by metal hitting bone and Yunho falls with a dull thump to the floor, unmoving underneath the shadow of a still-swinging punching bag, Yoochun’s aluminum baseball bat falling lifelessly, innocently, beside him)
“YUNHO!”
TBC
He remembers nothing of his childhood but sickness: constant fevers, delirium and coughing fits in the night. He remembers a lot of crying, of hands holding his face in the dark to coax him to eat, of tears falling like rain on his cheeks and hugs of a mother whose face he’s forgotten, to keep him warm. I’m sorry, is the last thing he hears from her before a long restful sleep claims him, and when he wakes finally, another woman has taken her place. A woman he knows he’s never known, but who holds him and fondles him as though he’d been always hers, who tucks him under the starched white blankets in the hospital and whose tears drizzle upon his lips as bitter salt.
Who are you, he asks, too weak to move but not stupid enough to realize that she is a stranger.
Don’t you remember me, Jaejoongah? She says, and he knows she’s been crying for a long time. It’s Mommy. It’s Mommy, sweetie, don’t you remember? It’s me.
He’s about to say no, about to back away from her touch but she holds him down with a soft hand and a wet smile. You were sick for a long time. It’s okay, the doctors have said you’re going to be fine. You’ll remember eventually, sweetie, don’t worry, it takes some time.
But I’m not…he says and attempts to pronounce his name, the name he knows is his, when the woman shushes him by placing a finger onto his lips. Don’t overexcite yourself, darling. Do you know how scared I was while you were sick? Let yourself recover first.
And even without him wanting her to, she lies down beside him on the bed, holds him close to her, humming a lullaby under her breath.
Do you remember this, Jaejoong? I used to sing it to you when you were a baby. You loved it; it always put you right to sleep. Do you remember? Darling? Sweetie?
But he doesn’t remember, the tone always unfamiliar to him as the odd syllables of the name that’s supposed to be his.
Jaejoong. Jaejoong. Jaejoong.
---
It’s cold the day Jaejoong disappears (3 since Yoochun had come home, 7 since he had last returned), and Yunho wakes to the sound of a lullaby echoing in his ears, the last few wisps of a dream he can’t really remember. The sun enters the bedroom in shafts through the shades pulled down the windows like uneven eyelids, and from beside him, he feels Yoochun stir, burrowing deeper into the soft sheets like a nesting cub. Like what greets him on many mornings, Jaejoong’s side of the bed is empty, but unlike most of those days, there’s a feeling that gnaws on his stomach raw, leaving a hole he knows shouldn’t be there.
“Jae…?” he mumbles the first time, the only time. There are no pots banging in the kitchen, no nameless tune being hummed, no movement being heard beyond the bedroom doors. Yunho tenses as the safe cocoon of sleep and dreams is pulled away, the silence holding the apartment hostage stabbing it and ripping it open in a most disconcerting way.
(What if I told you I don’t exist?)
He doesn’t call out Jaejoong’s name, but automatically searches the apartment barefoot for any sign, any clue of what had been Jaejoong’s presence or of why he’s gone, walking at first before quickly breaking out into a jog. He refuses to believe what instinct is telling him (No, he couldn’t have, he couldn’t, he couldn’t) and so doors are opened and rooms overturned, but there is no note, no extra pair of shoes by the door, no other clothes in his closet aside from his own, no paint-splattered coat hanging on the rack. The paintings that have been piling up by the sofa have gone, and it takes Yunho several more minutes of thorough searching before he discovers the disappearance of all of Jaejoong’s pictures from his laptop and camera, upon realizing that they aren’t actually where he had last left them (since when could things walk from desks to the middle of the dining-room table?). Stray pictures he had developed of Jaejoong have also gone, snatched blind from the walls of his darkroom, leaving empty spaces between Yoochun’s puckered lips and New York’s gray city skyline, and it’s there that Yunho rams a fist onto the wall, his breath starting to hitch and his chest beginning to tighten as realization hit him like a ten-wheeler truck.
“Bastard,” Yunho whispers, tears stinging his eyes. He doesn’t need the confirmation of a note; it’s all very clear. “You bastard. You bastard. You bastard.”
(I’d believe anything you say.)
---
I have baggage, he remembers telling Yunho once after he’s sure they’re done with that fearful first step. That day had been unnaturally warm and the two of them had spent it at the park underneath a dried-out elm, watching as Junsu taught Yoochun how to play (and cheat at) soccer.
I have secrets too, you know, Yunho had replied. So quit stealing the spotlight.
You don’t understand…
He had almost told him, had been nearly crushed by the temptation to do so, but he had bit his tongue at the last minute, had decided his dreams, his secret, could wait for a better time, for a more opportune moment.
What don’t I understand?
…Nothing.
He runs the entire way back to his apartment, back to the unnamed little corner that he had once been so proud to call his own. The moment he arrives, all his belongings that he had collected from the Jungs’ (a place he had been foolish enough to call home) land in a messy pile by the door: tubes of paint exploding like fireworks across the floorboards, brushes and pencils waltzing in air before hitting the ground, the pictures he had filched from Yunho’s walls cascading towards his feet like leaves in autumn. His knees give way not even a step later and he lets himself fold up into a ball on the floor, unable to move or speak or cry (ironic, now that he’s surrounded by his own smiles and laughter, worn as though by a different person, captured in a different time), not quite believing what he has just done but knowing deep inside of him that there really is no better way.
(I love you, Yunho had told him and had kissed him, his lips caramel-soft. I promise I’ll love your baggage too, whatever it is.)
Fate had always been cruel to him.
---
Yoochun draws each day that passes by without Jaejoong, filling the remaining days of his recovery period as fast as he fills sheet after sheet of butcher paper with rocket ships, dinosaurs and pirates, as well as with the five of them all together, colored blobs and blocks with messy smiles drawn across their faces. He had searched at first for Jaejoong, missing the warmth his body had offered when cuddled up next to him on Yunho’s bed, missing the steady meals (although they were ones he had always blatantly refused to eat, especially if it was red and Korean) that had provided for them a (false) sense of security, often bombarding Yunho with questions he [Yunho] could not (or dared not) answer. Thankfully, Changmin and Junsu are quick to fill in for Jaejoong’s absence and Yunho’s distance, offering themselves as distractions slash punching bags by bringing in Happy meals, candy bars and Disney tapes to help veer Yoochun’s attention away from the matter; Changmin also sings songs and starts teaching Yoochun some of the lessons he’s been missing out in school, and Junsu often sits down on the floor to draw or help Yoochun crash cars into each other. It’s successful at times, and much to Yunho’s relief, Yoochun is able to forget and doesn’t ask.
(Please stay, he remembers saying, begging even. Don’t leave.)
Cigarettes become his constant companions and when he knows Yoochun is safe with Changmin and Junsu, Yunho excuses himself for long walks up and down the block. Five days past and he’s still hoping, if only for a little bit, keeping his eyes peeled for the familiar hunch of Jaejoong’s shoulders in the cold, for the distinctive coat Jaejoong always insisted on wearing. Muddy boots clomping on the pavement. Paint-stained fingers dancing on air, conducting an invisible orchestra. A worn portfolio being swung from side to side.
(Please)
Two days, then five, then seven. Yoochun returns to school and comes home no longer crying. Junsu has gotten into the habit of buying their meals for them and leaving them at the apartment (because God forbid none of them can cook and no one can actually let Yoochun starve). Changmin babysits regularly despite school and keeps Yoochun company because he knows Yunho can’t. He’s stopped strangers in their tracks several times, has yelled Jaejoong’s name among a crowd in the hopes that he would stop, turn around, and he always imagines that at that point, he could (would) forgive Jaejoong for his inability to settle. But no one does, and Yunho always makes his way back to the apartment, mute, volatile, only forcing a small smile when confronted by or with Yoochun, but reserving the expression for no one else. The tiny glimmer of hope has gone.
(I told you, didn’t I? He can almost hear Jaejoong saying, a whisper so close the hairs on his neck stand on end. I can’t offer any promises)
“Don’t worry hyung, he’ll come back,” Yoochun tells him confidently, possessing an air Yunho never thought a six-year-old could pull off. His words fill in the horrible suffocating silence that’s developed between the two of them, stop suspended in air like rain clouds over their half-eaten (and quickly growing cold) dinner. “He always does.”
(He had overestimated Jaejoong)
“Finish your food.” Yunho doesn’t look up, doesn’t meet Yoochun’s eyes. He dismisses the matter quickly, dust swept under the rug. “Finish your food, then go to bed. You still have school tomorrow.”
(Live. Move on. Let go. Even though he knows he can’t)
---
The news articles are kept in an old Adidas shoebox he’s shoved to the darkest corner of his closet. It’s his odd little collection, a macabre hobby: photocopying article after article, cutting them up into neat little blocks of print before stuffing them one by one into the box, away from his mother’s sight. He knew she would have never approved of it; it was, after all, proof of the hearsay he had been hearing about her and her supposed son-him, but once upon a time there had been another him-, proving just how small a place, even one as large as Seoul, is, proving just how you can never escape anything, especially not a past you force to keep in the dark.
Don’t you ever believe what they say, she had used to tell him. I have the papers, the pictures. I was the one who had given birth to you. Who are they to tell you whom you are and whom you’re not?
It had caught up with him anyway, had managed to find him and his mother in their house on the southernmost tip of Cheongnam, several years after moving out of Seoul, several years after pretending to be someone he knows he’s not. (Odd name, Jaejoong, the old man had said. Are you sure you haven’t heard of that accident? It was some years back. Eerie that you share the same name with a dead boy.)
They’re all lies, she would always say. Umma wouldn’t tell you lies, would she? Forget all this, Jaejoong, it’s utter nonsense.
He finds the name in more than one of the articles. Back then, it had meant nothing, just a faceless name among many others, a suspect in one account, an accomplice in another. But now he follows each name he’s encircled in red, feeling a twinge in his heart every time he does so. He had hoped his memory had been wrong (after all it’s been a while since he last read these thoroughly), that it could have been another name, another person, but three characters stare back at him in the same arrangement, mocking him, pokes through his heart and lungs like pitchforks and makes it harder for him to breathe.
(It can’t be you, he had said the first time he noticed, surely it isn’t.)
He keeps silent this time, and the articles are thrown back into the box with shaking fingers and hastily kicked to the side. The contents spill like dead leaves, rustling, scratching on the floorboards with their yellowed edges.
(It can’t be. It can’t be.)
He covers his face with his hands. He’d known it all along.
---
Junsu has him doing freelance jobs to distract him while Yoochun is at school, volunteering him for various portraits and company ads. Yunho is indignant but gets each job done, swiftly, effortlessly, just to save them from embarrassment. Clients are impressed with the results, of course, and so is Junsu but Yunho scoffs, finding no reason for their enjoyment, knowing how each work is devoid of any emotion, of any passion he’s always had the pleasure of putting in. He refuses work at the nth request, waves Junsu away without batting an eyelash, and tells him in the simplest way possible that he doesn’t want to.
He’s not coming back, hyung! Junsu yells, red-faced and frustrated. He blocks the doorway to Yunho’s bedroom, and Yunho fights the urge to hit him. He’s left you!
Mind your own fucking business! He yells back, the first time he’s ever done to Junsu. He regrets it after, but the hurt and anger is overwhelming him and proves to be too powerful.
You can’t do this. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. To Yoochun. Goddamn it, learn to live!
(It’s an echo of something he’s heard before: You just live, goddamnit; you’ve no excuse)
YUNHO! JUNG YUNHO!
(It was too easy to fucking say.)
---
The call couldn’t have come in at a better time.
She’s dead, the man on the other line says without so much as a greeting, are you happy now? Are you happy now Jaejoong that your mother has died with your name on her lips? You ungrateful bastard. She took care of you and this is how you treat her, you undeserving son of a bitch. She loved you. She loved you so much-
Silence floods the apartment once more. His chest is hollow as he gets back to bed, and he casts the cut phone cord to the side, biting his lip and trying his best not to cry. Part of him feels he should be relieved, happy even, to be finally freed of obligation, of being constantly watched and guarded like a caged animal. He had hoped that, by escaping two of the only things he’s ever loved and hated, the two things that have managed to keep him afloat yet at the same time drown him, would save him from all this heartache.
But his heart is suddenly lonelier than it has ever been, beating less to keep him alive than to provide him with pain he needs none more of.
(Even in dreams he isn’t spared, and for the past few nights he’s one of the boys at the river, the runt of the lot, and he follows dancing circles of light, does his best to try and keep up. One minute he’s there and the next he’s cold and alone, shivering in the darkness, rivers down his cheeks, whispering someone’s name over and over)
I love you, he says softly, although he isn’t quite sure to whom, and a tear escapes him anyway, accompanying the soft moan he lets himself release as he curls up amidst mountains of dream-soaked sheets, wishing for the nth time that he could disappear.
---
Changmin helps him install the punching bag in his apartment one night after they’ve put Yoochun to bed and Yunho is thankful at his pretense to not notice that anything is wrong. Yunho can feel as the younger boy looks at him wide-eyed the first time he lets his fists rain down on the punching bag, resulting in bruised hands and friction-burnt fingers that Changmin holds gently in his own the second Yunho lets himself collapse forward, land on his knees, sweating, panting, gasping, and oh so angry.
“Hyung…” Changmin says, and there’s a hint of fear in his tone.
“Don’t tell Junsu,” Yunho says, looking up at him through sweaty hair, the salt stinging his eyes but he doesn’t care. “I mean it, Changmin.”
And Changmin stays silent for the rest of his stay, muttering only quiet “I’m sorry”s in between Yunho’s hissing, as he dabs at Yunho’s hands and fingers with ointment, looking the entire time as though he’d rather be somewhere else.
---
One more week and he lives like a shadow, reduced to just a being lying formless on his bed, plagued by constant headaches from lack of sleep and possibly too much thought, only getting up to shovel a spoonful of rice down his throat at random intervals, just to keep him from becoming too physically spent. The sun is kept out by thick curtains drawn over the large windows, and inside the apartment he can never tell if it’s morning or not, but it’s not as though it would make a difference to him anyway.
He’s having the same dream again. River, forest, laughter. A blur of legs and faces, hands rushing past branches that claw at their skin and moistened grass that make their sneakers slip. This time, however, he can discern voices, high and trembling in the wind.
(Something to show you, really, we swear)
A boy with raven hair and a nervous smile. Jaejoong, he says in a way that strikes him as familiar. Their hands touch, and their feet reach water, following the lead of the other boy, the bigger one, towards the deeper end.
The splash surprises him and he sees the bigger boy has suddenly gone, has suddenly disappeared underneath the roar of the river rushing past their legs. The other boy yells in surprise, lets go of his hand, and hurries over to the spot where his brother had been. Hyung! The boy shouts. HYUNG-
A hand shoots out, grabs the boy’s arm, and it takes Jaejoong a second to realize that it’s his. The other boy looks at him in surprise (Jaejoong what-) but a strength and intention that isn’t his own has the other boy suddenly pinned face first into the water, struggling in his hold, releasing an eruption of bubbles from unheard screams onto the surface.
No! he wants to shout, horrified, wants to stop himself, wants to free the other boy from his grasp but he’s mute and powerless, suddenly reduced to being a mere observer only trapped in someone else’s body. His limbs don’t obey him but his mind is screaming, horror digging deep into his throat like glass shards.
Let him go, let him go please, let him go
He attempts to struggle, but is kept in place by an unseen force. He’s seeing, feeling, hearing everything. The water is up to his chest and his knees are pressed hard onto the other boy’s back. He can feel the other boy thrashing from underneath him, trapped like an animal, can feel the bits of sand and rock grazing his skin from the boy’s persistent movement. He attempts to scream but nothing comes out.
Here’s the fun part now, a voice inside of him says, a voice he’s sure he’s never heard before. You get to watch him die.
(And somewhere in Seoul, a scream sounds in an apartment housing only one occupant, before it is quickly cut off by a crack caused by metal hitting bone and Yunho falls with a dull thump to the floor, unmoving underneath the shadow of a still-swinging punching bag, Yoochun’s aluminum baseball bat falling lifelessly, innocently, beside him)
“YUNHO!”
TBC