220km/sec - 3
220km/sec
jongin/jinyoung/sehun/jaebum/wonpil
pg-15, 4410w
warning: language
Jaebum stared up at the concrete slabs of the train tracks as he lay on the lumpy couch in the base. Years of sitting in the open had given the couch a musty, damp smell and Jaebum could feel the moisture soaking through his skin, but he didn’t particularly mind. To him it smelt of running through backstreets at night, of the sound of their sneakers slapping against pavement, of spraying graffiti on to the closed shutter of a random shop and getting chased by patrolling cops. He closed his eyes as a train passed overhead, the rumble vibrating through the air and reverberating in his bones. Had Jackson always laughed when they got caught? Suddenly he wasn’t too sure. How long would it take before he started to forget what Jackson’s laugh sounded like?
The rattling of the chainlink fence had him almost jumping to his feet. There was a thump of shoes against asphalt, and then Jongin emerged from around the corner, looking a little displeased when he saw who was waiting for him. Jaebum thought he caught a hint of a scowl on the corner of Jongin’s mouth, but maybe that was a trick of light. He wouldn’t put it past him though.
“Didn’t think I’d find you here,” Jongin remarked drily as Jaebum resettled on the couch, putting his feet up on the arm rest. He crossed his arms behind his head, maintaining a perfectly frosty silence as Jongin flumped into one of the car seats opposite, warming his hands by the hobo stove. “By the way, I beat your high score on Contagion.”
Jaebum managed a sound that was meant to be a laugh but switched to a scoff halfway. “I noticed.”
“How long do you think before you claim it back?” Jongin’s grin was toxic.
“I’ll let you have a few days to gloat,” Jaebum told him with an equally venomous smirk.
Jongin laughed then, settling into the chair and stretching his legs out in front of him. He lit the camping lantern - Jinyoung’s lantern - and pulled a book out of his backpack. “I’ll just have to make sure I get a perfect score then,” he winked at Jaebum and flipped open his book, signalling an end to the conversation. Jaebum watched him out of the corner of his eye for a few minutes. If there was anyone that was a walking contradiction it would be Kim Jongin, he had decided a long time ago. Skipped school at least once a week but had good enough grades to be a nice comfy middle in class. Never went home but was somehow still surviving. Never studied but could be found with his head in a book whenever he wasn’t dicking around (which wasn’t very often). Seemed friendly on the surface but was a spiteful little shit on the inside. Jaebum often wondered why Jackson never seemed to notice it.
“I was thinking we could go on a trip,” he said aloud instead. Jongin looked up from the pages, slight incredulity written on his face. Jaebum didn’t blame him; usually Jongin would be the last person he discussed plans with and they both knew it. But this time Jaebum needed him to be the one to suggest it, since Jinyoung was already on his case about Wonpil.
“To where?” Jongin asked, suspicion laced in his voice. Maybe he suspected something, but Jongin was the sort of person who walked around with a perfectly polished mirror in his hand and only saw what was reflected in it. Jaebum was sure that even if he did think something was up, he’d just turn the mirror away. It was just another thing about Jongin that irked him to no end.
“Incheon,” he replied as nonchalantly as he could. “We haven’t been there in a while.” He gave Jongin a few seconds before adding, “Jackson always said he’d like to go back, remember? Anyway, we could take this as a chance to get to know Wonpil better.” The final nail in the coffin. Jongin suddenly looked a little more enthusiastic.
Jaebum tried to convince himself that the last sentence wasn’t a bold-faced lie.
_______________________
“I can’t believe I actually let you talk me into this,” Jinyoung muttered as he slumped in the seat beside Jaebum. Wonpil sat on his other side, and across the aisle Jongin was fast asleep on Sehun’s shoulder, the bottom half of his face covered by a giant scarf.
“Why not? It’ll be fun,” Jaebum grinned back, nudging him. Jinyoung rolled his eyes and nudged back, but there was something about this trip that didn’t seem quite right to him. Sure, he had made all the plans and timed everything to perfection (this included strict instructions to Sehun to not let Jongin anywhere near the arcade and to take him straight back home after school) but there was something totally amiss about this whole situation. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
They still had plenty of time before the sun set, and as the train trembled and swayed around him, Jinyoung realized that more than a month had passed since Jackson’s funeral. Were you allowed to forget the exact date of the last time you saw someone alive? He’d already forgotten the last time he saw his grandmother alive, had already forgotten the little details about her. Were her hands soft or dry? Did she have a husky voice or a nasal one? Was her mole under her left eye or her right? Sudden grief bubbled in the middle of his chest and shot upwards and he choked as he tried to swallow it back down.
“Hey, are you okay?” Wonpil peered at him. He patted him on the back helpfully as Jinyoung tried to breathe normally.
“I’m fine,” he managed in a strained voice. He cleared his throat. “Just choked on my saliva,” he added in his regular one, and Wonpil nodded with understanding. Jaebum was reading the ads pasted to the tops of the train windows, but Jinyoung could tell from the tilt of his head that he was listening. He looked across the aisle and straight into Sehun’s dark gaze. There was something off about Sehun’s expression these days; he constantly looked as though something was haunting him. It gave Jinyoung chills.
What? he mouthed.
Sehun blinked, his expression switching to a more normal Sleepy Sehun one, and looked away.
_______________________
“Isn’t this what life is all about?” Jongin whooped as he ran down the concrete boardwalk, the sauce from his deep fried hotdog flying everywhere in the wind. The others followed at a less harried pace, chewing on their food. Beyond the rocks piled against the sea wall, the sky and the ocean were a uniform grey. A few seagulls floated overhead, occasionally calling out to each other, but apart from that the port was virtually deserted. Jongin jumped on to the low wall, holding his arms out to the sky. “Adventure!” he hollered into the open sea. The others jumped up beside him, staring out at the ocean.
“Screw homework! Screw school! Screw life!” Jinyoung yelled with a whoop as Jaebum laughed. Sehun simply grinned, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets as the wind bit at him. Wonpil laughed along with them, but there was something off about his smile. Sehun had noticed it out of the corner of his eye a while ago, the nervous curl in the corner of Wonpil’s mouth every time he laughed. As if there was something eating at him from the inside out.
“Hey, let’s go down there,” Jaebum pointed to a platform just away from the main boardwalk, connected via a gangway.
“It doesn’t look like we should go there…” Wonpil remarked a little uncertainly. Jongin tilted his back to look at him with an easy grin as Jaebum simply laughed again and shook his head a little condescendingly.
“This is probably the biggest thing to remember about us,”Jinyoung slung an arm around Wonpil - a little awkwardly, Sehun noted. Jinyoung was hardly ever the first to initiate contact with anyone… unless that person was Jackson. “If there are barriers, we climb them. If there are rules, we break them.”
“And if there are expectations put on us, we definitely don’t meet them,” Jongin joined in, throwing an arm over Jinyoung’s shoulders. A seagull cried out above their heads, and Sehun noted how alive Jongin looked. Out here, free from the constraints of concrete sidewalks and subway lines, there was an extra spring in Jongin’s steps, a little more light behind his eyes. Sehun appreciated it and hated it all at once.
“Except for Jinyoung,” Jaebum added. “Jinyoung always meets expectations.” He pushed the aforementioned boy lightly, who in turn rolled his eyes and shook his head. Jongin began steering Wonpil in the direction of the gangway, and Jaebum fell behind, walking in line with Sehun. “I know you think this trip is a little weird and out of the blue,” he said quietly. Sehun noticed Jinyoung glance back at them. “And Jinyoung thinks so too. But don’t you think we should test the waters with Wonpil a little?”
Sehun shrugged slightly. “I’m not really bothered about it,” he said easily. “Anyway, Wonpil doesn’t seem so bad.”
“Maybe,” Jaebum flicked his fire lighter on again. The flame promptly blew out in the wind. He’d been doing it an awful lot lately, Sehun had realized. Most of their silences since Jackson’s funeral had been punctuated by the clicking of Jaebum’s fire lighter. “But Wonpil isn’t Jackson.”
This time Sehun turned to look at him. Jaebum was staring straight ahead, whether into the back of Wonpil’s head or into space, Sehun couldn’t tell. His left hand was wrapped around his lighter as if he was afraid it would disappear if he were to loosen his grip on it. “Nobody will ever be Jackson,” Sehun said as quietly as possible, hoping the wind would carry his voice away. “We all know that.”
Jaebum’s smile was more of a grimace. “I sure hope so.” He looked at Sehun and gave an easier smile before clapping a hand on to his shoulder. “But hey, you know the other reason why we’re here, don’t you?” Sehun was sure that Jaebum’s friendly squeeze had left a bruise somewhere on his bones. “Uhh…” he managed.
“Isn’t it your birthday in a few days?” Jaebum clapped him once more on the back before withdrawing his hand, still grinning. “Did you think we forgot?”
Sehun watched Jongin laughing as he practically dragged Wonpil along by the neck and wondered how it must be to live a life without any worries, without feeling any guilt. No guilt when you didn’t remember your best friend’s birthday. No guilt when you couldn’t save your best friend from killing himself.
He managed a smile. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
Jaebum stuck his chin into the air in an exaggerated gesture. “You know it,” he said.
_______________________
If there was anything that Sehun had planned on doing, it most definitely did not involve spending the night wandering Incheon in search of lost hotheaded friends with a complete stranger in tow. He glanced back at Wonpil who was following him doggedly in the gloom. The nervous curl had disappeared from the corner of his mouth when Jinyoung stormed off, replaced by a look of deep, deep apprehension. Sehun sighed inwardly, seating himself on the rocks looking out over the sea. He and Wonpil had spent the better part of an hour traipsing up and down the boardwalk in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Jaebum or Jongin (he wasn't too worried about Jinyoung nor did he have any hopes of finding him anyway) but the chill was settling down in his bones and there was still no sign of anyone.
“Do you think we’ll find them in time?” Wonpil asked in a high voice, just as a seagull cried out above them. Sehun imagined that the seagull and Wonpil were operating on the same frequency. He looked up at the boy. The seagull disappeared into the night.
“I don't want to alarm you or anything, but there's no way in hell we’ll be getting back to Seoul tonight,” he said as calmly as possible. Not that he had ever used any other tone anyway. He patted the rock beside him. “Just sit down and breathe for a bit.”
For a second Wonpil didn't move, then he groaned and slid down beside Sehun. “What am I going to tell my parents?” he buried his head in his hands, and Sehun noticed his fingers grasping fistfuls of his hair. “I didn't even tell them I was going to Incheon.”
“Where did you tell them you were going then?” Sehun shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them warm. The waves slapping against the rocks below his feet was oddly calming.
“I said I was gonna go study with Jinyoung.” Wonpil’s voice was muffled.
Sehun straightened a little. “I didn't know you guys studied together.” He wondered how long Jinyoung really had known Wonpil. Had they always studied together? Was Wonpil some kind of friend-mistress-thing that Jinyoung had and conveniently forgot to tell them all about until after Jackson died? He imagined Jackson waggling his eyebrows at him. You’d totally like a mistress for yourself wouldn't you, Sehunnie?
Wonpil dropped his hands and looked at Sehun. “Yeah, he helps me with Math. Why?”
“Just asking.” Sehun was finding this whole conversation to be strangely unreal. As if he was floating above his body, watching himself talk about Math with a boy he barely knew. He had known Jongin for the better (or worse) part of three years and never had they ever spoken about Math. He couldn't even quite remember a time when any of them had ever spoken about schoolwork for that matter, excluding the times when he studied with Jinyoung after school.
“Hey Sehun,” Wonpil said into the silence. He was staring out across the water, his hands clutching at his knees, his fingers digging into the fabric of his jeans. “Who's Jackson?”
Sehun closed his eyes, wishing he could return to a few hours ago when Jinyoung rang him up and told him they were going to Incheon. He most definitely would have said no.
Maybe it was Jongin’s fault. After all, he was the one who kicked the football into the waves in the first place. “Geez, lighten up you guys!” he cackled when everyone groaned. “I was the one who bought it so it’s no big!” Sehun could still remember the defiant little tilt in the corner of Jongin’s smile when he said that, as if he had won a big prize.
But then again, maybe it had been Jaebum’s fault. If he hadn’t rolled his eyes, if he hadn’t remarked this is why we can’t have nice things in that snide voice that he seemed to reserve specially for Jongin’s wild antics, then maybe Jongin wouldn’t have whipped the cap from his head and tossed it into the rocking waves. Sehun remembered how gray the water had looked at that time as he watched Jaebum’s cap bobbing around, just out of reach. If Jaebum had simply let Jongin be, maybe then Sehun and Jinyoung wouldn’t have had to jump up from their seats on either side of Wonpil to keep them from throwing each other into the ocean too.
And maybe it was Jinyoung’s fault too, for shoving Jaebum in the chest and calling him “wild”, for turning to Jongin and going why the hell can’t you just grow up a little, Kim Jongin? Sehun had seen Jinyoung look impatient plenty of times, had seen that little furrow in his eyebrow that appear every time they sat together after school and Jinyoung went through his English homework for him, but he had never seen Jinyoung look as threatening as he did when he spat out, “Both of you need to damn well stop acting like Jackson’s going to come and stop you because he’s not.”
It was probably Sehun’s fault for letting the grief that always came at hearing Jackson’s name render him immobile while Jinyoung turned heel and stormed away. It was probably his fault when Jaebum gave Jongin the nastiest look he could muster and went after Jinyoung, and it was probably his fault for not stopping Jongin when he shoved him aside and disappeared off the pier as well.
Maybe it had been his fault from the beginning. If he was more forward like Jaebum, if he was more outgoing like Jongin, if he was more intelligent like Jinyoung, maybe he could have stopped Jackson from jumping. Maybe he would have acted upon that feeling of unease in Jackson’s voice. Then none of this would have happened.
“Sehun?” Wonpil’s voice jerked him back to Earth. They were standing in front of a kimbap store now, the glow from the yellow light above the doorway painting Wonpil’s cheeks hollow. Jaebum and Jinyoung and Jongin were still nowhere to be found. The remnants of the kimbap he had just eaten for dinner swirled a little uneasily in Sehun’s stomach. “Are you going to tell me about Jackson?”
Sehun watched the shadows flit across Wonpil’s cheekbones as a few moths gathered in the light overhead. The hour hand of the watch on his left wrist steadily ticked it’s way to 10pm. “Jackson was one of my best friends,” he said, calm as the swell of the ocean. He so desperately wanted to rid himself of the tightness in his chest, of the guilt that slept in his bones every waking hour that for once he just wanted to let himself go. “And I killed him.”
_______________________
They trawled sidestreets and shortcuts. If Sehun knew what any of his friends were like they wouldn’t be hanging around any of the main streets. Jaebum, he knew, prefered dark alleyways. Jinyoung would probably have found a cozy spot in an all-night cafe or convenience store and was probably reading. Maybe. One never really knew with Jinyoung. Jongin… well chances were Jongin was at an arcade or a noraebang, but Sehun couldn’t remember if there were any in the area and he wasn’t about to check.
He cast a glance at Wonpil out of the corner of his eye as they turned left into an alleyway with boarded up shopfronts and minimal lighting. Arms crossed over his chest, Wonpil looked just about ready to up and run at any given moment.
“Uhh, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Wonpil had announced the first time Sehun suggested they take a backstreet. He peered into the dark abyss behind Sehun’s shoulder and took a few steps back. “We don’t know what might be going on in these kind of places.”
“Look, I know what those guys are like,” Sehun tried hard to be patient. “And there’s a 50% chance that we’re probably going to find one of them in a place like this.” He tried to see things from Wonpil’s perspective, wandering through a town that he had never been to before in the middle of the night with a guy he barely knew, and he thought he could understand. Still, that didn’t account for the sense of disquiet that hung around Wonpil’s head, for the knotted tension in his shoulders.
“I’m sorry about this,” Sehun said aloud. Wonpil looked at him. “But the faster we find those idiots, the sooner we can get home.” And when he took a step into the dark, Wonpil followed without a word.
That had been 2 hours ago. Now they simply trudged along in silence, hands in their pockets. The time on Sehun’s watch was 1:15am. Sehun’s nose felt frozen on his face and he wished he had brought a mask. He inhaled cold air and thought longingly of his warm bed, of his soft pillows, of the hot kimchi stew he could have had for dinner instead of two rolls of cold kimbap. His stomach grumbled at the thought.
“Hey,” Wonpil suddenly stopped in his tracks and plucked on his elbow. “There’s someone there.”
Sehun peered through the gloom, wondering how on earth Wonpil had managed to spot anything in the near-dark, but eventually he managed to make out the figure sitting on the steps leading up to a doorway, half-hidden by the wall. Sehun had always been terrible at seeing things in the dark, but he had a niggling feeling just by the way the person was sitting that it was Jaebum.
“Wait!” Wonpil hissed and grabbed him by the arm when he started walking again. “Is this safe? We don’t know if it’s another drunk!”
Sehun recalled the way they had bolted like terrified rabbits when the first drunk came at them with fists after Wonpil tripped over his splayed out legs. In hindsight it was pretty funny, but at the time he didn’t think he’d been so scared in his life. Even running away from the cops seemed less scary. Maybe that was because he’d always had the others by his side.
“It’s alright,” he said now, releasing himself from Wonpil’s grasp. “Look at the way he’s sitting. He’s not drunk. It’s fine.” He kept walking, and once again Wonpil reluctantly followed. Sehun tried to shake the feeling that he had been walking a very nervous dog the entire night.
“Seriously, you guys couldn’t have picked a better time to disappear,” he said out loud as they neared the person. He felt Wonpil tense up beside him, but now that he was closer he was definitely sure that it was Jaebum. “My phone’s dead and I’m cold as hell. Thanks.” He nudged Jaebum’s sneaker with his own when there was no response. “Hey, this was all your idea remember?”
Jaebum moved then, leaning forward out of the shadows. He had the air of someone who just woken up around him, and Sehun suddenly felt more than a little peeved. He’d been walking around for hours just to find the people he’d been looking for fast asleep. “It was Jongin’s idea,” Jaebum mumbled.
“Jongin doesn’t come up with these things on his own,” Sehun said mildly, seating himself beside him. He looked up at Wonpil and patted the space beside him. “I know you. You’re smart. And Jongin’s smart too but he’ll go along with anything as long as he gets to have fun. He wouldn’t come up with anything that benefits anyone else.”
“What’s up with you?” Jaebum asked, pulling his lighter out of his pocket. He flicked it on, and Sehun noticed how exhausted he looked. He was sure the dark circles under Jaebum’s eyes mirrored his own. “You don’t sound like you.” He flicked the lighter off.
Sehun looked up at the inky black sky, the moonlight struggling to break through the heavy clouds that swept across it. “It’s the night, that’s what it is,” he said to the moon, his breath creating his very own cloud around him. “It’s the damn night.” Wonpil suddenly laid his head on his shoulder as the three of them huddled together for warmth, and soon his even breathing told Sehun that he was asleep. For some reason, Sehun let him stay there.
“We’ll catch the first train back,” Jaebum said. He glanced at Wonpil. “I guess we didn’t make a very good first impression on him, huh?”
“You mean you didn’t,” Sehun replied. He and Jaebum kept looking up at the crescent moon, shaped like a Cheshire Cat smile that he knew so well. I killed him. He wondered how Wonpil had managed to stay with him the whole night after he said that. He guessed people were a lot stronger than what they seemed. “Jackson’s probably laughing at us right now.”
Jaebum scoffed slightly, but he grinned all the same. “Yeah he would be, the dumb fuck.” Sehun managed to laugh a little then too as he felt the weariness of the day beginning to crash down on him in waves. Wonpil’s head on his shoulder grew lighter with each passing second. His mind was just giving itself up to sleep when he heard Jaebum say from a great distance, “Hey Sehun, do you think Jackson’s disappointed in us?”
Sehun tried to open his mouth to answer but he’d already drifted away.
_______________________
They found Jinyoung slumped over a table in a convenience store they stopped at before heading to the train station, a cup of ramyun and an overturned book beside his head. Jaebum woke him up with a shake and a “you’ll spoil your book if you keep it like that” and shut it for him. Jinyoung casted one forlorn look at Wonpil and Sehun and immediately mumbled an apology.
“Don’t worry about it,” Sehun said mildly, and went to get some bad coffee from the machine. He never knew how to behave when people started apologizing to him.
They found Jongin sprawled on a bench outside the station when they got there at 5.15am, just as the first signs of the morning were beginning to streak across the sky. He was curled into himself, and in that moment Sehun had never seen Jongin look so vulnerable. It didn’t take long for him to wake up when Jaebum kicked the bench and Jinyoung proceeded to sit on him.
“Well, you idiots sure took a long time to find me,” Jongin grinned as Sehun shoved the rest of his lukewarm watery coffee into his hand. “How was your night?” he asked Wonpil.
Sehun turned to look at Wonpil, who produced a bright grin. “It was pretty cool,” he remarked, glancing once at Sehun before looking away. In that short look Sehun saw defiance written in Wonpil’s eyes.
“Heck yeah it was!” Jongin crowed, slinging an arm around his shoulder as they all began making their way into the station. Sehun trailed a little behind them, struggling to wipe the confusion from his face.
Jongin was fast asleep on his shoulder again on the train journey back to Seoul as the sky lightened steadily around them. Wonpil and Jinyoung were leaning against each other and Jaebum’s head was slumped forward, nodding in time with the swaying of the rain. Sehun looked at each of his friend’s sleeping faces and wondered just how many secrets each of them had to hide before he fell asleep too.
tbc
jongin/jinyoung/sehun/jaebum/wonpil
pg-15, 4410w
warning: language
Jaebum stared up at the concrete slabs of the train tracks as he lay on the lumpy couch in the base. Years of sitting in the open had given the couch a musty, damp smell and Jaebum could feel the moisture soaking through his skin, but he didn’t particularly mind. To him it smelt of running through backstreets at night, of the sound of their sneakers slapping against pavement, of spraying graffiti on to the closed shutter of a random shop and getting chased by patrolling cops. He closed his eyes as a train passed overhead, the rumble vibrating through the air and reverberating in his bones. Had Jackson always laughed when they got caught? Suddenly he wasn’t too sure. How long would it take before he started to forget what Jackson’s laugh sounded like?
The rattling of the chainlink fence had him almost jumping to his feet. There was a thump of shoes against asphalt, and then Jongin emerged from around the corner, looking a little displeased when he saw who was waiting for him. Jaebum thought he caught a hint of a scowl on the corner of Jongin’s mouth, but maybe that was a trick of light. He wouldn’t put it past him though.
“Didn’t think I’d find you here,” Jongin remarked drily as Jaebum resettled on the couch, putting his feet up on the arm rest. He crossed his arms behind his head, maintaining a perfectly frosty silence as Jongin flumped into one of the car seats opposite, warming his hands by the hobo stove. “By the way, I beat your high score on Contagion.”
Jaebum managed a sound that was meant to be a laugh but switched to a scoff halfway. “I noticed.”
“How long do you think before you claim it back?” Jongin’s grin was toxic.
“I’ll let you have a few days to gloat,” Jaebum told him with an equally venomous smirk.
Jongin laughed then, settling into the chair and stretching his legs out in front of him. He lit the camping lantern - Jinyoung’s lantern - and pulled a book out of his backpack. “I’ll just have to make sure I get a perfect score then,” he winked at Jaebum and flipped open his book, signalling an end to the conversation. Jaebum watched him out of the corner of his eye for a few minutes. If there was anyone that was a walking contradiction it would be Kim Jongin, he had decided a long time ago. Skipped school at least once a week but had good enough grades to be a nice comfy middle in class. Never went home but was somehow still surviving. Never studied but could be found with his head in a book whenever he wasn’t dicking around (which wasn’t very often). Seemed friendly on the surface but was a spiteful little shit on the inside. Jaebum often wondered why Jackson never seemed to notice it.
“I was thinking we could go on a trip,” he said aloud instead. Jongin looked up from the pages, slight incredulity written on his face. Jaebum didn’t blame him; usually Jongin would be the last person he discussed plans with and they both knew it. But this time Jaebum needed him to be the one to suggest it, since Jinyoung was already on his case about Wonpil.
“To where?” Jongin asked, suspicion laced in his voice. Maybe he suspected something, but Jongin was the sort of person who walked around with a perfectly polished mirror in his hand and only saw what was reflected in it. Jaebum was sure that even if he did think something was up, he’d just turn the mirror away. It was just another thing about Jongin that irked him to no end.
“Incheon,” he replied as nonchalantly as he could. “We haven’t been there in a while.” He gave Jongin a few seconds before adding, “Jackson always said he’d like to go back, remember? Anyway, we could take this as a chance to get to know Wonpil better.” The final nail in the coffin. Jongin suddenly looked a little more enthusiastic.
Jaebum tried to convince himself that the last sentence wasn’t a bold-faced lie.
_______________________
“I can’t believe I actually let you talk me into this,” Jinyoung muttered as he slumped in the seat beside Jaebum. Wonpil sat on his other side, and across the aisle Jongin was fast asleep on Sehun’s shoulder, the bottom half of his face covered by a giant scarf.
“Why not? It’ll be fun,” Jaebum grinned back, nudging him. Jinyoung rolled his eyes and nudged back, but there was something about this trip that didn’t seem quite right to him. Sure, he had made all the plans and timed everything to perfection (this included strict instructions to Sehun to not let Jongin anywhere near the arcade and to take him straight back home after school) but there was something totally amiss about this whole situation. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
They still had plenty of time before the sun set, and as the train trembled and swayed around him, Jinyoung realized that more than a month had passed since Jackson’s funeral. Were you allowed to forget the exact date of the last time you saw someone alive? He’d already forgotten the last time he saw his grandmother alive, had already forgotten the little details about her. Were her hands soft or dry? Did she have a husky voice or a nasal one? Was her mole under her left eye or her right? Sudden grief bubbled in the middle of his chest and shot upwards and he choked as he tried to swallow it back down.
“Hey, are you okay?” Wonpil peered at him. He patted him on the back helpfully as Jinyoung tried to breathe normally.
“I’m fine,” he managed in a strained voice. He cleared his throat. “Just choked on my saliva,” he added in his regular one, and Wonpil nodded with understanding. Jaebum was reading the ads pasted to the tops of the train windows, but Jinyoung could tell from the tilt of his head that he was listening. He looked across the aisle and straight into Sehun’s dark gaze. There was something off about Sehun’s expression these days; he constantly looked as though something was haunting him. It gave Jinyoung chills.
What? he mouthed.
Sehun blinked, his expression switching to a more normal Sleepy Sehun one, and looked away.
_______________________
“Isn’t this what life is all about?” Jongin whooped as he ran down the concrete boardwalk, the sauce from his deep fried hotdog flying everywhere in the wind. The others followed at a less harried pace, chewing on their food. Beyond the rocks piled against the sea wall, the sky and the ocean were a uniform grey. A few seagulls floated overhead, occasionally calling out to each other, but apart from that the port was virtually deserted. Jongin jumped on to the low wall, holding his arms out to the sky. “Adventure!” he hollered into the open sea. The others jumped up beside him, staring out at the ocean.
“Screw homework! Screw school! Screw life!” Jinyoung yelled with a whoop as Jaebum laughed. Sehun simply grinned, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets as the wind bit at him. Wonpil laughed along with them, but there was something off about his smile. Sehun had noticed it out of the corner of his eye a while ago, the nervous curl in the corner of Wonpil’s mouth every time he laughed. As if there was something eating at him from the inside out.
“Hey, let’s go down there,” Jaebum pointed to a platform just away from the main boardwalk, connected via a gangway.
“It doesn’t look like we should go there…” Wonpil remarked a little uncertainly. Jongin tilted his back to look at him with an easy grin as Jaebum simply laughed again and shook his head a little condescendingly.
“This is probably the biggest thing to remember about us,”Jinyoung slung an arm around Wonpil - a little awkwardly, Sehun noted. Jinyoung was hardly ever the first to initiate contact with anyone… unless that person was Jackson. “If there are barriers, we climb them. If there are rules, we break them.”
“And if there are expectations put on us, we definitely don’t meet them,” Jongin joined in, throwing an arm over Jinyoung’s shoulders. A seagull cried out above their heads, and Sehun noted how alive Jongin looked. Out here, free from the constraints of concrete sidewalks and subway lines, there was an extra spring in Jongin’s steps, a little more light behind his eyes. Sehun appreciated it and hated it all at once.
“Except for Jinyoung,” Jaebum added. “Jinyoung always meets expectations.” He pushed the aforementioned boy lightly, who in turn rolled his eyes and shook his head. Jongin began steering Wonpil in the direction of the gangway, and Jaebum fell behind, walking in line with Sehun. “I know you think this trip is a little weird and out of the blue,” he said quietly. Sehun noticed Jinyoung glance back at them. “And Jinyoung thinks so too. But don’t you think we should test the waters with Wonpil a little?”
Sehun shrugged slightly. “I’m not really bothered about it,” he said easily. “Anyway, Wonpil doesn’t seem so bad.”
“Maybe,” Jaebum flicked his fire lighter on again. The flame promptly blew out in the wind. He’d been doing it an awful lot lately, Sehun had realized. Most of their silences since Jackson’s funeral had been punctuated by the clicking of Jaebum’s fire lighter. “But Wonpil isn’t Jackson.”
This time Sehun turned to look at him. Jaebum was staring straight ahead, whether into the back of Wonpil’s head or into space, Sehun couldn’t tell. His left hand was wrapped around his lighter as if he was afraid it would disappear if he were to loosen his grip on it. “Nobody will ever be Jackson,” Sehun said as quietly as possible, hoping the wind would carry his voice away. “We all know that.”
Jaebum’s smile was more of a grimace. “I sure hope so.” He looked at Sehun and gave an easier smile before clapping a hand on to his shoulder. “But hey, you know the other reason why we’re here, don’t you?” Sehun was sure that Jaebum’s friendly squeeze had left a bruise somewhere on his bones. “Uhh…” he managed.
“Isn’t it your birthday in a few days?” Jaebum clapped him once more on the back before withdrawing his hand, still grinning. “Did you think we forgot?”
Sehun watched Jongin laughing as he practically dragged Wonpil along by the neck and wondered how it must be to live a life without any worries, without feeling any guilt. No guilt when you didn’t remember your best friend’s birthday. No guilt when you couldn’t save your best friend from killing himself.
He managed a smile. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
Jaebum stuck his chin into the air in an exaggerated gesture. “You know it,” he said.
_______________________
If there was anything that Sehun had planned on doing, it most definitely did not involve spending the night wandering Incheon in search of lost hotheaded friends with a complete stranger in tow. He glanced back at Wonpil who was following him doggedly in the gloom. The nervous curl had disappeared from the corner of his mouth when Jinyoung stormed off, replaced by a look of deep, deep apprehension. Sehun sighed inwardly, seating himself on the rocks looking out over the sea. He and Wonpil had spent the better part of an hour traipsing up and down the boardwalk in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Jaebum or Jongin (he wasn't too worried about Jinyoung nor did he have any hopes of finding him anyway) but the chill was settling down in his bones and there was still no sign of anyone.
“Do you think we’ll find them in time?” Wonpil asked in a high voice, just as a seagull cried out above them. Sehun imagined that the seagull and Wonpil were operating on the same frequency. He looked up at the boy. The seagull disappeared into the night.
“I don't want to alarm you or anything, but there's no way in hell we’ll be getting back to Seoul tonight,” he said as calmly as possible. Not that he had ever used any other tone anyway. He patted the rock beside him. “Just sit down and breathe for a bit.”
For a second Wonpil didn't move, then he groaned and slid down beside Sehun. “What am I going to tell my parents?” he buried his head in his hands, and Sehun noticed his fingers grasping fistfuls of his hair. “I didn't even tell them I was going to Incheon.”
“Where did you tell them you were going then?” Sehun shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them warm. The waves slapping against the rocks below his feet was oddly calming.
“I said I was gonna go study with Jinyoung.” Wonpil’s voice was muffled.
Sehun straightened a little. “I didn't know you guys studied together.” He wondered how long Jinyoung really had known Wonpil. Had they always studied together? Was Wonpil some kind of friend-mistress-thing that Jinyoung had and conveniently forgot to tell them all about until after Jackson died? He imagined Jackson waggling his eyebrows at him. You’d totally like a mistress for yourself wouldn't you, Sehunnie?
Wonpil dropped his hands and looked at Sehun. “Yeah, he helps me with Math. Why?”
“Just asking.” Sehun was finding this whole conversation to be strangely unreal. As if he was floating above his body, watching himself talk about Math with a boy he barely knew. He had known Jongin for the better (or worse) part of three years and never had they ever spoken about Math. He couldn't even quite remember a time when any of them had ever spoken about schoolwork for that matter, excluding the times when he studied with Jinyoung after school.
“Hey Sehun,” Wonpil said into the silence. He was staring out across the water, his hands clutching at his knees, his fingers digging into the fabric of his jeans. “Who's Jackson?”
Sehun closed his eyes, wishing he could return to a few hours ago when Jinyoung rang him up and told him they were going to Incheon. He most definitely would have said no.
Maybe it was Jongin’s fault. After all, he was the one who kicked the football into the waves in the first place. “Geez, lighten up you guys!” he cackled when everyone groaned. “I was the one who bought it so it’s no big!” Sehun could still remember the defiant little tilt in the corner of Jongin’s smile when he said that, as if he had won a big prize.
But then again, maybe it had been Jaebum’s fault. If he hadn’t rolled his eyes, if he hadn’t remarked this is why we can’t have nice things in that snide voice that he seemed to reserve specially for Jongin’s wild antics, then maybe Jongin wouldn’t have whipped the cap from his head and tossed it into the rocking waves. Sehun remembered how gray the water had looked at that time as he watched Jaebum’s cap bobbing around, just out of reach. If Jaebum had simply let Jongin be, maybe then Sehun and Jinyoung wouldn’t have had to jump up from their seats on either side of Wonpil to keep them from throwing each other into the ocean too.
And maybe it was Jinyoung’s fault too, for shoving Jaebum in the chest and calling him “wild”, for turning to Jongin and going why the hell can’t you just grow up a little, Kim Jongin? Sehun had seen Jinyoung look impatient plenty of times, had seen that little furrow in his eyebrow that appear every time they sat together after school and Jinyoung went through his English homework for him, but he had never seen Jinyoung look as threatening as he did when he spat out, “Both of you need to damn well stop acting like Jackson’s going to come and stop you because he’s not.”
It was probably Sehun’s fault for letting the grief that always came at hearing Jackson’s name render him immobile while Jinyoung turned heel and stormed away. It was probably his fault when Jaebum gave Jongin the nastiest look he could muster and went after Jinyoung, and it was probably his fault for not stopping Jongin when he shoved him aside and disappeared off the pier as well.
Maybe it had been his fault from the beginning. If he was more forward like Jaebum, if he was more outgoing like Jongin, if he was more intelligent like Jinyoung, maybe he could have stopped Jackson from jumping. Maybe he would have acted upon that feeling of unease in Jackson’s voice. Then none of this would have happened.
“Sehun?” Wonpil’s voice jerked him back to Earth. They were standing in front of a kimbap store now, the glow from the yellow light above the doorway painting Wonpil’s cheeks hollow. Jaebum and Jinyoung and Jongin were still nowhere to be found. The remnants of the kimbap he had just eaten for dinner swirled a little uneasily in Sehun’s stomach. “Are you going to tell me about Jackson?”
Sehun watched the shadows flit across Wonpil’s cheekbones as a few moths gathered in the light overhead. The hour hand of the watch on his left wrist steadily ticked it’s way to 10pm. “Jackson was one of my best friends,” he said, calm as the swell of the ocean. He so desperately wanted to rid himself of the tightness in his chest, of the guilt that slept in his bones every waking hour that for once he just wanted to let himself go. “And I killed him.”
_______________________
They trawled sidestreets and shortcuts. If Sehun knew what any of his friends were like they wouldn’t be hanging around any of the main streets. Jaebum, he knew, prefered dark alleyways. Jinyoung would probably have found a cozy spot in an all-night cafe or convenience store and was probably reading. Maybe. One never really knew with Jinyoung. Jongin… well chances were Jongin was at an arcade or a noraebang, but Sehun couldn’t remember if there were any in the area and he wasn’t about to check.
He cast a glance at Wonpil out of the corner of his eye as they turned left into an alleyway with boarded up shopfronts and minimal lighting. Arms crossed over his chest, Wonpil looked just about ready to up and run at any given moment.
“Uhh, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Wonpil had announced the first time Sehun suggested they take a backstreet. He peered into the dark abyss behind Sehun’s shoulder and took a few steps back. “We don’t know what might be going on in these kind of places.”
“Look, I know what those guys are like,” Sehun tried hard to be patient. “And there’s a 50% chance that we’re probably going to find one of them in a place like this.” He tried to see things from Wonpil’s perspective, wandering through a town that he had never been to before in the middle of the night with a guy he barely knew, and he thought he could understand. Still, that didn’t account for the sense of disquiet that hung around Wonpil’s head, for the knotted tension in his shoulders.
“I’m sorry about this,” Sehun said aloud. Wonpil looked at him. “But the faster we find those idiots, the sooner we can get home.” And when he took a step into the dark, Wonpil followed without a word.
That had been 2 hours ago. Now they simply trudged along in silence, hands in their pockets. The time on Sehun’s watch was 1:15am. Sehun’s nose felt frozen on his face and he wished he had brought a mask. He inhaled cold air and thought longingly of his warm bed, of his soft pillows, of the hot kimchi stew he could have had for dinner instead of two rolls of cold kimbap. His stomach grumbled at the thought.
“Hey,” Wonpil suddenly stopped in his tracks and plucked on his elbow. “There’s someone there.”
Sehun peered through the gloom, wondering how on earth Wonpil had managed to spot anything in the near-dark, but eventually he managed to make out the figure sitting on the steps leading up to a doorway, half-hidden by the wall. Sehun had always been terrible at seeing things in the dark, but he had a niggling feeling just by the way the person was sitting that it was Jaebum.
“Wait!” Wonpil hissed and grabbed him by the arm when he started walking again. “Is this safe? We don’t know if it’s another drunk!”
Sehun recalled the way they had bolted like terrified rabbits when the first drunk came at them with fists after Wonpil tripped over his splayed out legs. In hindsight it was pretty funny, but at the time he didn’t think he’d been so scared in his life. Even running away from the cops seemed less scary. Maybe that was because he’d always had the others by his side.
“It’s alright,” he said now, releasing himself from Wonpil’s grasp. “Look at the way he’s sitting. He’s not drunk. It’s fine.” He kept walking, and once again Wonpil reluctantly followed. Sehun tried to shake the feeling that he had been walking a very nervous dog the entire night.
“Seriously, you guys couldn’t have picked a better time to disappear,” he said out loud as they neared the person. He felt Wonpil tense up beside him, but now that he was closer he was definitely sure that it was Jaebum. “My phone’s dead and I’m cold as hell. Thanks.” He nudged Jaebum’s sneaker with his own when there was no response. “Hey, this was all your idea remember?”
Jaebum moved then, leaning forward out of the shadows. He had the air of someone who just woken up around him, and Sehun suddenly felt more than a little peeved. He’d been walking around for hours just to find the people he’d been looking for fast asleep. “It was Jongin’s idea,” Jaebum mumbled.
“Jongin doesn’t come up with these things on his own,” Sehun said mildly, seating himself beside him. He looked up at Wonpil and patted the space beside him. “I know you. You’re smart. And Jongin’s smart too but he’ll go along with anything as long as he gets to have fun. He wouldn’t come up with anything that benefits anyone else.”
“What’s up with you?” Jaebum asked, pulling his lighter out of his pocket. He flicked it on, and Sehun noticed how exhausted he looked. He was sure the dark circles under Jaebum’s eyes mirrored his own. “You don’t sound like you.” He flicked the lighter off.
Sehun looked up at the inky black sky, the moonlight struggling to break through the heavy clouds that swept across it. “It’s the night, that’s what it is,” he said to the moon, his breath creating his very own cloud around him. “It’s the damn night.” Wonpil suddenly laid his head on his shoulder as the three of them huddled together for warmth, and soon his even breathing told Sehun that he was asleep. For some reason, Sehun let him stay there.
“We’ll catch the first train back,” Jaebum said. He glanced at Wonpil. “I guess we didn’t make a very good first impression on him, huh?”
“You mean you didn’t,” Sehun replied. He and Jaebum kept looking up at the crescent moon, shaped like a Cheshire Cat smile that he knew so well. I killed him. He wondered how Wonpil had managed to stay with him the whole night after he said that. He guessed people were a lot stronger than what they seemed. “Jackson’s probably laughing at us right now.”
Jaebum scoffed slightly, but he grinned all the same. “Yeah he would be, the dumb fuck.” Sehun managed to laugh a little then too as he felt the weariness of the day beginning to crash down on him in waves. Wonpil’s head on his shoulder grew lighter with each passing second. His mind was just giving itself up to sleep when he heard Jaebum say from a great distance, “Hey Sehun, do you think Jackson’s disappointed in us?”
Sehun tried to open his mouth to answer but he’d already drifted away.
_______________________
They found Jinyoung slumped over a table in a convenience store they stopped at before heading to the train station, a cup of ramyun and an overturned book beside his head. Jaebum woke him up with a shake and a “you’ll spoil your book if you keep it like that” and shut it for him. Jinyoung casted one forlorn look at Wonpil and Sehun and immediately mumbled an apology.
“Don’t worry about it,” Sehun said mildly, and went to get some bad coffee from the machine. He never knew how to behave when people started apologizing to him.
They found Jongin sprawled on a bench outside the station when they got there at 5.15am, just as the first signs of the morning were beginning to streak across the sky. He was curled into himself, and in that moment Sehun had never seen Jongin look so vulnerable. It didn’t take long for him to wake up when Jaebum kicked the bench and Jinyoung proceeded to sit on him.
“Well, you idiots sure took a long time to find me,” Jongin grinned as Sehun shoved the rest of his lukewarm watery coffee into his hand. “How was your night?” he asked Wonpil.
Sehun turned to look at Wonpil, who produced a bright grin. “It was pretty cool,” he remarked, glancing once at Sehun before looking away. In that short look Sehun saw defiance written in Wonpil’s eyes.
“Heck yeah it was!” Jongin crowed, slinging an arm around his shoulder as they all began making their way into the station. Sehun trailed a little behind them, struggling to wipe the confusion from his face.
Jongin was fast asleep on his shoulder again on the train journey back to Seoul as the sky lightened steadily around them. Wonpil and Jinyoung were leaning against each other and Jaebum’s head was slumped forward, nodding in time with the swaying of the rain. Sehun looked at each of his friend’s sleeping faces and wondered just how many secrets each of them had to hide before he fell asleep too.
tbc