Talk About the Weather [infinite; woohyun/sungkyu] (1/2)
Talk About the Weather
woohyun/sungkyu
m, 10,200 words
warnings: animal death, casual references to morbid events, infidelity
Sunggyu learns that coping is a process, and a few other things along the way. AU (AO3 mirror)
originally posted here for seasonthreee!
(soojung = lovelyz' baby soul! the prompts used were stubborn love by the lumineers, this pic, and this quote.)
It wasn't a surprise when Dubu finally kicked the bucket.
He’d been old, younger than Sunggyu obviously, but ancient in dog years. In the subsequent romanticised montage of Dubu’s life, Sunggyu found himself wishing he was a dog too. Dubu lived a pretty fun life in retrospect. Had a quiet, relatively painless death, and Howon and Dongwoo were always more considerate roommates to Dubu than they were to Sunggyu. Then again, virtually everyone was nicer to Dubu than they were to Sunggyu, but who wouldn’t be good to you if you had a life span of only 15 years.
Howon wanted to bury him in the backyard. Unfortunately, living in an apartment meant they didn’t even have a backyard, and Mrs. Lee who lived on the ground floor had caught them trying to dig a hole in the front lawn and threatened to file a complaint to the landlord. She’d never liked Dubu - probably because she owned like thirty cats, but who’s Sunggyu to judge. Dongwoo was ready to fight the good fight but Sunggyu held him back and apologised for the damage. Truthfully, Sunggyu didn’t actually want to live with the knowledge that the body of his dead dog was lying literally three feet away from where he’d be collecting the mail.
They ended up burying Dubu in a pet cemetery. They didn’t really have money for anything grand, so they’d bought a small slab of concrete and Howon spent thirty minutes scratching Dubu’s name on it with a nail. Sunggyu went back a week later to lay some flowers on his grave, but after walking four rounds of the lot, accepted that he’d forgotten where exactly they’d buried him, and went home to send the flowers to Hyosung for her birthday instead. She emailed him a Thank You message that Sunggyu marked as important.
Sunggyu doesn’t remember exactly how many weeks after that Dongwoo slid the pamphlet across the dining table. He’d obstructed Sunggyu’s view of the sketch he was trying to draw, but when Sunggyu looked up, there was something on both Dongwoo and Howon’s faces that had him swallowing his protests and croaking out “This is unnecessary, but I’ll think about it” instead.
Sunggyu remembers first meeting Nam Woohyun a week into the second semester of his first year at University. In the dark Woohyun had looked rough, face finely cut, and- fine, he was hot. There you go. He was really fucking hot, and hot people usually don’t proposition Sunggyu until they’ve known him for at least six months, they’re drunk, and really in need of a rebound.
Woohyun was really hot, didn’t look like his inhibition was dulled by anything other than the late hour, smelt pretty nice, and so Sunggyu honestly could not think of any reason to say no. Until the next morning that is, when he had woken up bleary eyed to Woohyun buttoning up his school uniform. In the muted yellow light filtering through the thin curtains of the dorm room, his face didn’t look nearly as rugged or dark or whatever perverse wish-fulfilling fantasy Sunggyu’s brain had managed to conjure up last night. In fact Woohyun looked flat-out boyish with all the eyeliner smudged off, and better than any cold shower is the realisation that- “Did I just fuck a minor?”
It’s ironic because Sunggyu looks at him now and thinks Woohyun looks pretty fucking old considering he should only be like what- 24? 25 now? Sunggyu isn’t exactly fit, but he raises a hand to rub against his smooth skin and feels a rush of pride.
“Sunggyu-ssi,” Soojung says, startling Sunggyu out of his weird bout of self-praise. Woohyun tilts his head at Sunggyu from the opposite side of the circle, and Sunggyu finds himself wondering if Woohyun remembers him. Which is a stupid question, because of course Woohyun remembers him.
“Uh yes?” Sunggyu says. “Oh um, sorry. Do I introduce myself now?” Soojung smiles at him and nods. Soojung’s smiles look forced, like her default face is so exhausted that trying to look even remotely positive is a strenuous task.
“Okay um,” Sunggyu stands up and wipes his hands down his jeans. “I’m Kim Sunggyu, 27 years old. I’m an artist, I usually work with watercolour and I lost my dog a couple of weeks ago and- uh.” The dainty looking kid with nice hair has his hand in the air - Sungjong, his name tag says. He’s already introduced himself but Sunggyu was definitely not listening. “Yeah?”
Sungjong clears his throat and scrapes his chair forward before asking: “Are you serious?”
Sunggyu gapes, and has to wait a few seconds for his cognitive gears to start turning again. “Uh, yes. Don’t... mourn police me.”
Sungjong raises an eyebrow, “Do you know why I’m here?” he asks. Sunggyu doesn’t, obviously. Isn’t really sure he wants to know either. “I used to be an idol trainee,” Sungjong answers anyway. “I spent four years on my hands and knees ready to suck my leader’s dick if he asked me to just because he was older and I thought the only way I could ever get anywhere was if he thought I was good enough. Four years. Four years,” he repeats, voice dropping chillingly low. “Then, when I finally left, I had to throw my phone in the trash and then burn the entire bin so I wouldn’t cave and call him again. And then on my 21st Birthday, he sent me an email outlining all the ways that I was a worthless, untalented, waste of space, and I read every single word. Read them twice, in fact. And by the end of it I was just really, really, ecstatic because I finally knew what his new email address was.”
Sunggyu blinks. How’s he meant to top that? He does a slow scan of the room, everyone’s either nodding absently, or staring at the clock, no one seems to notice that Sunggyu’s skin is burning off his face. Some fucking support group.
“And you,” Sungjong enunciates. He breathes in through his nose and closes his eyes. When he exhales, it’s like he’s breathing out Sunggyu’s mass in air. “Your dog died.”
Sunggyu bristles. Fucking brat. “Listen alright, that dog meant more to me than your entire-“
“Everybody!” Soojung chimes, raising her pen in the air. “Your worth, it’s not defined by what other people think, and putting others down to alleviate yourself isn’t necessary. In the eyes of the God we’re the same, we’re equal, and that kind of depreciating thinking is what you’re trying to defeat by coming here, right Sunggyu-ssi?”
Soojung actually borrowed that pen off Sunggyu right before the session started, so he knows it’s not about to shoot a poisoned dart at him. Still, Soojung points the end of it directly at his throat and you can never be too safe. “Yes,” he agrees, hand coming up to shield his jugular vein. “Yes that’s exactly right.”
The thing is though, everyone might be equal in the eyes of God, but Sunggyu is not God, and already Sungjong ranks lower than his broken garbage disposal, and everyone else that introduces themselves probably do rank higher than Woohyun but Sunggyu’s a pessimist who always focuses on the worst things. So when it’s finally Woohyun’s turn, Sunggyu forces himself to try and appear no less inattentive than he’d been the rest of the hour.
Woohyun stands up and clears his throat. “Hello, I’m Nam Woohyun, 25 years old.” He smiles and waves and sits back down again. Sunggyu blinks and looks to his right: Soojung’s jaw tenses but she does her generic welcome greeting before prompting the next person to speak.
So it’s only Sunggyu who feels oddly cheated then. That’s how it is.
Dongwoo and Howon are comparing prospective apartments when Sunggyu comes home that evening. Howon raises a hand to acknowledge that he’s registered Sunggyu’s presence in the room, and then goes back to nit-picking over the ideal tap water pressure with Dongwoo. Sunggyu gets it, he does. Life happens. Sometimes you get engaged to the love of your life, sometimes you manage to get your dream job, sometimes you have to move out and dump your third roommate into a grief daycare because he’s hung up on his Jindo biting the dust. Still, he wishes they wouldn’t do it so shamelessly in front of him.
Sunggyu’s plan is to grab a mildly satisfying snack and retreat into his room to work on the goddamn painting he’s been trying to finishing for the past month. He gets as far as opening the fridge and grabbing a piece of gyeongju bread before Dongwoo’s voice basically skips over to him with it’s enthusiasm.
“Hyung! How was it?” he asks, grinning at Sunggyu expectantly. Howon furrows his eyebrows, like he’s confused about Sunggyu existing, until a lightbulb goes off in his head.
“Oh right! That support group thing at the college,” Howon remembers. “You actually went?”
Sunggyu flicks a small crumb at Howon. “You guys are the one who peer-pressured me into going.”
“Yeah but I didn’t think you’d actually take our advice,” Howon refutes. “So anyway, how was it?”
Sunggyu weighs up the pros and cons in his head. “It was… not what I expected,” he says.
Dongwoo props himself up on the kitchen counter, leaning forward. “In a good way or bad way?”
“In a…” Sunggyu hesitates. In the silence, when he thinks back - to Soojung’s words of positivity, frayed from overuse around the edges; to Sungjong’s weighted glare; to gathering up courage at the end of the session, and opening his eyes to find Woohyun gone - the Earth feels lighter. He’s afraid of moving, like he might fall through the solid kitchen tiles below him. “In an unexpected way,” he answers.
“Hyung,” Howon prompts. Sunggyu startles, almost falling into the open fridge. “You alright there?”
Sunggyu looks down. The bread in his hand is crushed beyond recognition. Half of it’s in pieces on the ground, and the red bean paste is all over his fingers like he’d been squeezing the blood out of Dubu’s heart instead.
Someone’s hand wraps around his, and then Dongwoo is guiding him to the kitchen sink, cleaning off his fingers under the tap water. Howon has the phone pressed against his ear and shoulder, standing at the hallway table looking through the drawer where they hoard take-out menus. “Let’s order in tonight, I don’t feel like cooking, and I want to celebrate a successful day of apartment hunting” he says.
He pulls out the menu for the Japanese restaurant nobody except Sunggyu enjoys.
The night before the second meeting, Sunggyu makes a list of all the things he wants to say to Woohyun. It’s a pretty short one, probably not deserving of the 10 drafts lying underneath Sunggyu’s desk in the form of scrunched up paper balls. The first thing on the list is ’How are you?’, the second thing is ’Do you remember me?’.
What ends up actually coming out of Sunggyu’s mouth when he finally gets a chance to speak to Woohyun is: “So what the fuck is wrong with you?”
He regrets it as soon as it’s out of in the air between them. The thing with Woohyun is, he’s always been insurmountably, arguably irrationally, sensitive. Which means having a bad hair day and having his parents die in a car crash would more or less elicit the same emotional response from him. Right now Sunggyu runs a 50/50 chance between being an asshole, and being an asshole who’s about to be punched in the face.
Thankfully Woohyun seems unphased. He finishes off the mini-sandwich in his hand before dignifying Sunggyu with a response.
“I have approximately seven weeks left to live,” he reveals, reaching towards the refreshment table for a cup of orange juice. Sunggyu’s world comes to an abrupt halt, before the small quirk of Woohyun’s lips comes into view and it quickly begins turning again, a little lopsided as it tries to pretend it didn’t stop thanks to Nam Woohyun of all people in the first place.
“You liar,” Sunggyu bites out, Woohyun’s eyes smile at him from over his plastic cup. “I can’t believe you broke the 10th promise of Co-Dependents Anonymous already. Thou shall not be a fucking piece of shit.”
“I do not remember that being on the pamphlet.”
“Seriously,” Sunggyu cuts in, “Why are you here?”
“Honestly?” Woohyun presses.
Sunggyu rolls his eyes. “No, lie to me.”
“Fine,” Woohyun complies, “But you asked for it. Well, I was feeling kind of lonely so I called up Hyomin-noona - remember her? She did fashion, was in your textiles class. I called her up and we were like, alright let’s fool around a little bit just to make things less depressing but obviously I fell like an idiot for Hyomin, ‘cos how can you not fall in love with Hyomin. But then she went to Japan for some conference and met this guy called Joon and when she came back to Seoul she had a boyfriend!” Woohyun makes jazz hands, like he’d just done a clever magic trick and wasn’t detailing the breakdown of his psyche.
“Anyway, I didn’t take it that well and lit Joon’s car on fire and locked myself in my apartment and wouldn’t come out for weeks. Kibum - you wouldn’t know him, but he’s my best friend - came over one day and told me to get my life in order and threw the ad for this place at me. So, that’s how I ended up here, meeting you,” he finishes, popping a carrot into his mouth.
Sunggyu feels dizzy all of a sudden, he grabs a cup of water from the table and downs it in one go. He takes his time choosing the right words before speaking. “You’re crazy,” he decides. “You being here with the rest of us is disrespectful.”
“I’m sure...” Woohyun says slowly. “How’s your dog, hyung?”
“Fuck you-“
“Do I hear negativity?” Soojung’s voice rings from the other side of the room. Sunggyu’s back straightens. He plasters on a smile that he hopes doesn’t look as artificial as it feels and waves in Soojung’s direction. “No?” Soojung says, “I don’t, Sunggyu-ssi? That’s good.”
Woohyun laughs. He looks young when he laughs, almost cute. Well, Woohyun used to always be cute to Sunggyu, but when his lips split into a smile, and his eyes turned into crescents, and his whole body began shaking, it became an especially. Sunggyu remembers this very clearly. That stupid laugh got him to do a lot of stupid things.
“I really am sorry about your dog, hyung,” Woohyun says later. They’d spent an hour going around the circle, professing to what Soojung called Faith, hope and realisation. Even if you fail, and you lapse back to self-destructive, controlling, compliant, or avoidant patterns, there’s a Power greater than you that’s able to restore you back to sanity. To Sunggyu it was just an embarrassing game of madlibs.
(To a higher Power I acknowledge that my attachment to (my dog) was unhealthy and unloving to myself. I felt into patterns of (avoidance) when faced with (the death of my dog), and I admit that many of these habits were out of my reach. This Power is greater than myself, and through Him I will achieve liberation from (my dog).)
“It’s fine,” Sunggyu assures tiredly, massaging his temples. From the corner of his eye he can see Sungjong glaring at him; his pissy mood from last week hasn’t dissipated in the least and Sunggyu spent the entire session pretending like he couldn’t feel the force of Sungjong’s disdain burning a hole into his forehead. “I’m sorry about my dog too.”
Woohyun hums, Sunggyu wants to leave but he isn’t sure whether Woohyun’s going to follow him out to continue the conversation. “What was his name again… Dubu right?” Woohyun asks.
Sunggyu’s mouth goes dry. He runs his tongue along the inside of his lips, and it’s like he’s scraping sandalwood. “Yeah,” he replies.
“You used to hate dogs,” Woohyun remembers. His eyes are unfocused, like he’s talking to himself. “It’s funny how things turn out.”
Sunggyu goes straight to his room when he arrives home, acting like he can’t see the flattened cardboard boxes stacked against the living room wall. Lately he’s been making most of his income through doing design commissions for advertising agencies. He isn’t proud, but there’s no way for him to make profit off his actual art when he’s only a starving artist because he can’t produce any fucking art in the first place.
On his desk there’s a crude sketch of an anthropomorphised steering wheel, a mascot he’d been hired to draw for a small car dealership. He scowls at it before walking to his supply closet, finding a medium sized watercolour canvas and using it to cover the drawing. Sunggyu scratches his finger down the material, comes away with nothing but white residue under his nail, and it’s calming for once in it’s vivid blankness.
Sunggyu has two more commissions to finish before this week ends if he wants to put food on the table, but since he’s here anyway he grabs his brushes and starts painting.
The alleged first time Sunggyu met Sungyeol was at a party at Dongwoo’s house. One he never even wanted to go to, but he’d accidentally ended up falling asleep in Dongwoo’s bed after finally finishing his Printmaking assignment, and woke up at 11pm with some gangly kid vomiting into his shoes. The second time he’d met Sungyeol was more formal, or as formal as meeting your teenage one-night stand’s best friend can be at least.
“You’re… 17,” Sunggyu had groaned. The age of consent in Korea is 13, but that wasn’t about to score him points with anyone whose opinion mattered. “Oh geez.”
Sungyeol had looked flabbergasted. “You’re only 19? Holy shit. When we saw you we thought you were at least 30. Woohyun I want my money back.”
Sungyeol of the present day looks sheepish, scratching the back of his neck as Sunggyu glares at him. “I’ve apologised for that like twenty times. Sorry hyung, but you seriously looked super old then. You look a lot better now, that nose job was a good idea.”
Sunggyu rubs the tip of his nose defensively. “Shut up, it’s the hair.”
Sungyeol doesn’t look convinced. “Right.”
“Is it bring your pet to school day?” Sunggyu snaps, turning his attention to Woohyun who simply shrugs.
“Don’t worry,” Sungyeol assures, holding a fist against his heart. “I come completely free of judgement. I want you to recover more than you do.”
Sunggyu shakes his head. “You’re both idiots.”
To Sungyeol’s credit, he’s a lot more reserved and quiet than Sunggyu ever remembers him being. Maybe being next to someone like Woohyun just made him seem louder- have to be louder. Or maybe it’s circumstance. Sunggyu never thought much of Sungyeol’s ability to compartmentalise, but sitting in a circle listening to broken people retrace exactly how they came to be so broken is probably dense enough to sink right to the bottom of the most unaffected person. Except Sunggyu, apparently. But it’s not that he’s apathetic. If he’s being honest with himself, it’s because like almost everybody else here, he’s only a little self-absorbed.
Maybe that’s why when Sunggyu first walked into the room to see Sungyeol with an arm around Woohyun’s shoulder, it was his seventh meeting with Sungyeol that he remembered first and clearest. They hadn’t even met in person, but in the same way he can still feel the ache in his shoulders from when Woohyun had pushed his way into the room all those years ago; can still feel Woohyun’s hand wrapping around his neck like it’s a scarf he’s always wearing; feel his lips mouthing ”Relax, okay? It’s not your fault if you couldn’t stop it.”; he could hear Sungyeol’s voice from Woohyun’s discarded phone on the floor that night, yelling “Fine, don’t listen to me Woohyun. You chose him, so go fuck him. Do whatever you want.” like he was shouting it right at Sunggyu’s face.
“I…” Sunggyu’s speaking. He’s standing up. Sungyeol is looking straight towards him.
“Do you want me to prompt you?” Soojung offers when he’s been quiet for too long. God, her can-do front is so fake it’s transparent, but Sunggyu’s thankful for it. He nods, and Soojung clears her throat. “What do you think lead to you to forming a unhealthy relationship with your dog?”
Sungjong snickers, but it’s not him Sunggyu owes an honest answer to. “I think it was…” he pauses to take a shaky breath. “He was always there, I think. I’m really… I’m used to being in control, I don’t know, I guess it comes from being a bit of a perfectionist. It’s not that I controlled Dubu- that’s his name, by the way. I think it was just nice to have somebody there who wanted my affection, or went out of their way to seek it out. I liked taking care of him too, I liked being able to I don’t know… Alright, yeah, feel in control that way. He was a little bit like medicine. He was there everyday, there were some obviously irritating side-effects, like I think I spent more on food for him than I did for myself, but I accepted it all without thinking. Then, when he left, when I stopped taking the medicine- that’s when I noticed. Noticed the difference it all made.”
He blows a thin strand of air through pursed lips to try and ground himself. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, not applause or anything, but it feels weird, wrong, to come to finding himself standing in the same room, in front of the same people. Sungyeol looks confused, and Sunggyu feels embarrassment trickle down from the top of his head and pool in his gut.
“Can I go to the bathroom?” Sunggyu asks, not wanting to be alive any longer. Soojung is about to nod her assent, until she spots Woohyun slouched in his chair with his hand up and says, “Can you answer Woohyun-ssi’s question first?”
Sunggyu opens his mouth to refuse, but ends up blurting out, “Sure.”
Woohyun looks conflicted, like he didn’t really want Sunggyu to end up saying yes. “What colour was your dog?” he asks.
Sunggyu’s recall ability momentarily blanks out. He shakes his head until the right word settles itself at the front of his memory. “White,” he answers. Dirty white, actually. Like the colour of the snow after Sunggyu had trekked all over it. Like the colour of Sunggyu’s sheets if they’d been a canvas, and Woohyun a brush.
“What’s this?” Dongwoo asks, standing in front of Sunggyu and the television. Sunggyu lets out an annoyed grunt and strains his neck to try and see past him.
“I don’t know Dongwoo, go see a doctor,” Sunggyu dismisses. “Amy already has a ring, she doesn’t need to catch further proof of commitment.”
“Funny,” Dongwoo snorts, and then drops something on the coffee table that's large enough to make a loud noise. “I mean this. What's this?”
Sunggyu crinkles his forehead, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. “Oh right.” He blinks. “I painted that. It’s Haeundae Beach. Remember when we went there on holiday after graduation?”
“You painted it,” Dongwoo says, astonished. A reaction that would make more sense to Sunggyu if they hadn’t been friends since high school and all the way through University where Sunggyu had graduated with a Fine Arts degree. “Why was it in the same box as my shoes?”
“I wanted you to have something to remember me by in your new home,” Sunggyu explains, shrugging.
Dongwoo’s eyes look watery, and half of Sunggyu tenses up into alarm, and half of him softens into something dangerously sentimental. “Geez,” Sunggyu whines, pushing himself up from the couch to wrap Dongwoo in a hug. “You’re the one moving out, why are you being this way?”
“You’re so annoying,” Dongwoo gulps into crook of Sunggyu’s shoulder. “I’ve been feeling really guilty and I don’t know. I’m glad you’re painting again.”
Right. Sunggyu had forgotten he’d stopped in the first place. It wasn’t like it was a conscious decision after all.
“I’m getting there,” Sunggyu resolves, playing with the hair on the back of Dongwoo’s neck. “Slowly.”
next
woohyun/sungkyu
m, 10,200 words
warnings: animal death, casual references to morbid events, infidelity
Sunggyu learns that coping is a process, and a few other things along the way. AU (AO3 mirror)
originally posted here for seasonthreee!
(soojung = lovelyz' baby soul! the prompts used were stubborn love by the lumineers, this pic, and this quote.)
It wasn't a surprise when Dubu finally kicked the bucket.
He’d been old, younger than Sunggyu obviously, but ancient in dog years. In the subsequent romanticised montage of Dubu’s life, Sunggyu found himself wishing he was a dog too. Dubu lived a pretty fun life in retrospect. Had a quiet, relatively painless death, and Howon and Dongwoo were always more considerate roommates to Dubu than they were to Sunggyu. Then again, virtually everyone was nicer to Dubu than they were to Sunggyu, but who wouldn’t be good to you if you had a life span of only 15 years.
Howon wanted to bury him in the backyard. Unfortunately, living in an apartment meant they didn’t even have a backyard, and Mrs. Lee who lived on the ground floor had caught them trying to dig a hole in the front lawn and threatened to file a complaint to the landlord. She’d never liked Dubu - probably because she owned like thirty cats, but who’s Sunggyu to judge. Dongwoo was ready to fight the good fight but Sunggyu held him back and apologised for the damage. Truthfully, Sunggyu didn’t actually want to live with the knowledge that the body of his dead dog was lying literally three feet away from where he’d be collecting the mail.
They ended up burying Dubu in a pet cemetery. They didn’t really have money for anything grand, so they’d bought a small slab of concrete and Howon spent thirty minutes scratching Dubu’s name on it with a nail. Sunggyu went back a week later to lay some flowers on his grave, but after walking four rounds of the lot, accepted that he’d forgotten where exactly they’d buried him, and went home to send the flowers to Hyosung for her birthday instead. She emailed him a Thank You message that Sunggyu marked as important.
Sunggyu doesn’t remember exactly how many weeks after that Dongwoo slid the pamphlet across the dining table. He’d obstructed Sunggyu’s view of the sketch he was trying to draw, but when Sunggyu looked up, there was something on both Dongwoo and Howon’s faces that had him swallowing his protests and croaking out “This is unnecessary, but I’ll think about it” instead.
Sunggyu remembers first meeting Nam Woohyun a week into the second semester of his first year at University. In the dark Woohyun had looked rough, face finely cut, and- fine, he was hot. There you go. He was really fucking hot, and hot people usually don’t proposition Sunggyu until they’ve known him for at least six months, they’re drunk, and really in need of a rebound.
Woohyun was really hot, didn’t look like his inhibition was dulled by anything other than the late hour, smelt pretty nice, and so Sunggyu honestly could not think of any reason to say no. Until the next morning that is, when he had woken up bleary eyed to Woohyun buttoning up his school uniform. In the muted yellow light filtering through the thin curtains of the dorm room, his face didn’t look nearly as rugged or dark or whatever perverse wish-fulfilling fantasy Sunggyu’s brain had managed to conjure up last night. In fact Woohyun looked flat-out boyish with all the eyeliner smudged off, and better than any cold shower is the realisation that- “Did I just fuck a minor?”
It’s ironic because Sunggyu looks at him now and thinks Woohyun looks pretty fucking old considering he should only be like what- 24? 25 now? Sunggyu isn’t exactly fit, but he raises a hand to rub against his smooth skin and feels a rush of pride.
“Sunggyu-ssi,” Soojung says, startling Sunggyu out of his weird bout of self-praise. Woohyun tilts his head at Sunggyu from the opposite side of the circle, and Sunggyu finds himself wondering if Woohyun remembers him. Which is a stupid question, because of course Woohyun remembers him.
“Uh yes?” Sunggyu says. “Oh um, sorry. Do I introduce myself now?” Soojung smiles at him and nods. Soojung’s smiles look forced, like her default face is so exhausted that trying to look even remotely positive is a strenuous task.
“Okay um,” Sunggyu stands up and wipes his hands down his jeans. “I’m Kim Sunggyu, 27 years old. I’m an artist, I usually work with watercolour and I lost my dog a couple of weeks ago and- uh.” The dainty looking kid with nice hair has his hand in the air - Sungjong, his name tag says. He’s already introduced himself but Sunggyu was definitely not listening. “Yeah?”
Sungjong clears his throat and scrapes his chair forward before asking: “Are you serious?”
Sunggyu gapes, and has to wait a few seconds for his cognitive gears to start turning again. “Uh, yes. Don’t... mourn police me.”
Sungjong raises an eyebrow, “Do you know why I’m here?” he asks. Sunggyu doesn’t, obviously. Isn’t really sure he wants to know either. “I used to be an idol trainee,” Sungjong answers anyway. “I spent four years on my hands and knees ready to suck my leader’s dick if he asked me to just because he was older and I thought the only way I could ever get anywhere was if he thought I was good enough. Four years. Four years,” he repeats, voice dropping chillingly low. “Then, when I finally left, I had to throw my phone in the trash and then burn the entire bin so I wouldn’t cave and call him again. And then on my 21st Birthday, he sent me an email outlining all the ways that I was a worthless, untalented, waste of space, and I read every single word. Read them twice, in fact. And by the end of it I was just really, really, ecstatic because I finally knew what his new email address was.”
Sunggyu blinks. How’s he meant to top that? He does a slow scan of the room, everyone’s either nodding absently, or staring at the clock, no one seems to notice that Sunggyu’s skin is burning off his face. Some fucking support group.
“And you,” Sungjong enunciates. He breathes in through his nose and closes his eyes. When he exhales, it’s like he’s breathing out Sunggyu’s mass in air. “Your dog died.”
Sunggyu bristles. Fucking brat. “Listen alright, that dog meant more to me than your entire-“
“Everybody!” Soojung chimes, raising her pen in the air. “Your worth, it’s not defined by what other people think, and putting others down to alleviate yourself isn’t necessary. In the eyes of the God we’re the same, we’re equal, and that kind of depreciating thinking is what you’re trying to defeat by coming here, right Sunggyu-ssi?”
Soojung actually borrowed that pen off Sunggyu right before the session started, so he knows it’s not about to shoot a poisoned dart at him. Still, Soojung points the end of it directly at his throat and you can never be too safe. “Yes,” he agrees, hand coming up to shield his jugular vein. “Yes that’s exactly right.”
The thing is though, everyone might be equal in the eyes of God, but Sunggyu is not God, and already Sungjong ranks lower than his broken garbage disposal, and everyone else that introduces themselves probably do rank higher than Woohyun but Sunggyu’s a pessimist who always focuses on the worst things. So when it’s finally Woohyun’s turn, Sunggyu forces himself to try and appear no less inattentive than he’d been the rest of the hour.
Woohyun stands up and clears his throat. “Hello, I’m Nam Woohyun, 25 years old.” He smiles and waves and sits back down again. Sunggyu blinks and looks to his right: Soojung’s jaw tenses but she does her generic welcome greeting before prompting the next person to speak.
So it’s only Sunggyu who feels oddly cheated then. That’s how it is.
Dongwoo and Howon are comparing prospective apartments when Sunggyu comes home that evening. Howon raises a hand to acknowledge that he’s registered Sunggyu’s presence in the room, and then goes back to nit-picking over the ideal tap water pressure with Dongwoo. Sunggyu gets it, he does. Life happens. Sometimes you get engaged to the love of your life, sometimes you manage to get your dream job, sometimes you have to move out and dump your third roommate into a grief daycare because he’s hung up on his Jindo biting the dust. Still, he wishes they wouldn’t do it so shamelessly in front of him.
Sunggyu’s plan is to grab a mildly satisfying snack and retreat into his room to work on the goddamn painting he’s been trying to finishing for the past month. He gets as far as opening the fridge and grabbing a piece of gyeongju bread before Dongwoo’s voice basically skips over to him with it’s enthusiasm.
“Hyung! How was it?” he asks, grinning at Sunggyu expectantly. Howon furrows his eyebrows, like he’s confused about Sunggyu existing, until a lightbulb goes off in his head.
“Oh right! That support group thing at the college,” Howon remembers. “You actually went?”
Sunggyu flicks a small crumb at Howon. “You guys are the one who peer-pressured me into going.”
“Yeah but I didn’t think you’d actually take our advice,” Howon refutes. “So anyway, how was it?”
Sunggyu weighs up the pros and cons in his head. “It was… not what I expected,” he says.
Dongwoo props himself up on the kitchen counter, leaning forward. “In a good way or bad way?”
“In a…” Sunggyu hesitates. In the silence, when he thinks back - to Soojung’s words of positivity, frayed from overuse around the edges; to Sungjong’s weighted glare; to gathering up courage at the end of the session, and opening his eyes to find Woohyun gone - the Earth feels lighter. He’s afraid of moving, like he might fall through the solid kitchen tiles below him. “In an unexpected way,” he answers.
“Hyung,” Howon prompts. Sunggyu startles, almost falling into the open fridge. “You alright there?”
Sunggyu looks down. The bread in his hand is crushed beyond recognition. Half of it’s in pieces on the ground, and the red bean paste is all over his fingers like he’d been squeezing the blood out of Dubu’s heart instead.
Someone’s hand wraps around his, and then Dongwoo is guiding him to the kitchen sink, cleaning off his fingers under the tap water. Howon has the phone pressed against his ear and shoulder, standing at the hallway table looking through the drawer where they hoard take-out menus. “Let’s order in tonight, I don’t feel like cooking, and I want to celebrate a successful day of apartment hunting” he says.
He pulls out the menu for the Japanese restaurant nobody except Sunggyu enjoys.
The night before the second meeting, Sunggyu makes a list of all the things he wants to say to Woohyun. It’s a pretty short one, probably not deserving of the 10 drafts lying underneath Sunggyu’s desk in the form of scrunched up paper balls. The first thing on the list is ’How are you?’, the second thing is ’Do you remember me?’.
What ends up actually coming out of Sunggyu’s mouth when he finally gets a chance to speak to Woohyun is: “So what the fuck is wrong with you?”
He regrets it as soon as it’s out of in the air between them. The thing with Woohyun is, he’s always been insurmountably, arguably irrationally, sensitive. Which means having a bad hair day and having his parents die in a car crash would more or less elicit the same emotional response from him. Right now Sunggyu runs a 50/50 chance between being an asshole, and being an asshole who’s about to be punched in the face.
Thankfully Woohyun seems unphased. He finishes off the mini-sandwich in his hand before dignifying Sunggyu with a response.
“I have approximately seven weeks left to live,” he reveals, reaching towards the refreshment table for a cup of orange juice. Sunggyu’s world comes to an abrupt halt, before the small quirk of Woohyun’s lips comes into view and it quickly begins turning again, a little lopsided as it tries to pretend it didn’t stop thanks to Nam Woohyun of all people in the first place.
“You liar,” Sunggyu bites out, Woohyun’s eyes smile at him from over his plastic cup. “I can’t believe you broke the 10th promise of Co-Dependents Anonymous already. Thou shall not be a fucking piece of shit.”
“I do not remember that being on the pamphlet.”
“Seriously,” Sunggyu cuts in, “Why are you here?”
“Honestly?” Woohyun presses.
Sunggyu rolls his eyes. “No, lie to me.”
“Fine,” Woohyun complies, “But you asked for it. Well, I was feeling kind of lonely so I called up Hyomin-noona - remember her? She did fashion, was in your textiles class. I called her up and we were like, alright let’s fool around a little bit just to make things less depressing but obviously I fell like an idiot for Hyomin, ‘cos how can you not fall in love with Hyomin. But then she went to Japan for some conference and met this guy called Joon and when she came back to Seoul she had a boyfriend!” Woohyun makes jazz hands, like he’d just done a clever magic trick and wasn’t detailing the breakdown of his psyche.
“Anyway, I didn’t take it that well and lit Joon’s car on fire and locked myself in my apartment and wouldn’t come out for weeks. Kibum - you wouldn’t know him, but he’s my best friend - came over one day and told me to get my life in order and threw the ad for this place at me. So, that’s how I ended up here, meeting you,” he finishes, popping a carrot into his mouth.
Sunggyu feels dizzy all of a sudden, he grabs a cup of water from the table and downs it in one go. He takes his time choosing the right words before speaking. “You’re crazy,” he decides. “You being here with the rest of us is disrespectful.”
“I’m sure...” Woohyun says slowly. “How’s your dog, hyung?”
“Fuck you-“
“Do I hear negativity?” Soojung’s voice rings from the other side of the room. Sunggyu’s back straightens. He plasters on a smile that he hopes doesn’t look as artificial as it feels and waves in Soojung’s direction. “No?” Soojung says, “I don’t, Sunggyu-ssi? That’s good.”
Woohyun laughs. He looks young when he laughs, almost cute. Well, Woohyun used to always be cute to Sunggyu, but when his lips split into a smile, and his eyes turned into crescents, and his whole body began shaking, it became an especially. Sunggyu remembers this very clearly. That stupid laugh got him to do a lot of stupid things.
“I really am sorry about your dog, hyung,” Woohyun says later. They’d spent an hour going around the circle, professing to what Soojung called Faith, hope and realisation. Even if you fail, and you lapse back to self-destructive, controlling, compliant, or avoidant patterns, there’s a Power greater than you that’s able to restore you back to sanity. To Sunggyu it was just an embarrassing game of madlibs.
(To a higher Power I acknowledge that my attachment to (my dog) was unhealthy and unloving to myself. I felt into patterns of (avoidance) when faced with (the death of my dog), and I admit that many of these habits were out of my reach. This Power is greater than myself, and through Him I will achieve liberation from (my dog).)
“It’s fine,” Sunggyu assures tiredly, massaging his temples. From the corner of his eye he can see Sungjong glaring at him; his pissy mood from last week hasn’t dissipated in the least and Sunggyu spent the entire session pretending like he couldn’t feel the force of Sungjong’s disdain burning a hole into his forehead. “I’m sorry about my dog too.”
Woohyun hums, Sunggyu wants to leave but he isn’t sure whether Woohyun’s going to follow him out to continue the conversation. “What was his name again… Dubu right?” Woohyun asks.
Sunggyu’s mouth goes dry. He runs his tongue along the inside of his lips, and it’s like he’s scraping sandalwood. “Yeah,” he replies.
“You used to hate dogs,” Woohyun remembers. His eyes are unfocused, like he’s talking to himself. “It’s funny how things turn out.”
Sunggyu goes straight to his room when he arrives home, acting like he can’t see the flattened cardboard boxes stacked against the living room wall. Lately he’s been making most of his income through doing design commissions for advertising agencies. He isn’t proud, but there’s no way for him to make profit off his actual art when he’s only a starving artist because he can’t produce any fucking art in the first place.
On his desk there’s a crude sketch of an anthropomorphised steering wheel, a mascot he’d been hired to draw for a small car dealership. He scowls at it before walking to his supply closet, finding a medium sized watercolour canvas and using it to cover the drawing. Sunggyu scratches his finger down the material, comes away with nothing but white residue under his nail, and it’s calming for once in it’s vivid blankness.
Sunggyu has two more commissions to finish before this week ends if he wants to put food on the table, but since he’s here anyway he grabs his brushes and starts painting.
The alleged first time Sunggyu met Sungyeol was at a party at Dongwoo’s house. One he never even wanted to go to, but he’d accidentally ended up falling asleep in Dongwoo’s bed after finally finishing his Printmaking assignment, and woke up at 11pm with some gangly kid vomiting into his shoes. The second time he’d met Sungyeol was more formal, or as formal as meeting your teenage one-night stand’s best friend can be at least.
“You’re… 17,” Sunggyu had groaned. The age of consent in Korea is 13, but that wasn’t about to score him points with anyone whose opinion mattered. “Oh geez.”
Sungyeol had looked flabbergasted. “You’re only 19? Holy shit. When we saw you we thought you were at least 30. Woohyun I want my money back.”
Sungyeol of the present day looks sheepish, scratching the back of his neck as Sunggyu glares at him. “I’ve apologised for that like twenty times. Sorry hyung, but you seriously looked super old then. You look a lot better now, that nose job was a good idea.”
Sunggyu rubs the tip of his nose defensively. “Shut up, it’s the hair.”
Sungyeol doesn’t look convinced. “Right.”
“Is it bring your pet to school day?” Sunggyu snaps, turning his attention to Woohyun who simply shrugs.
“Don’t worry,” Sungyeol assures, holding a fist against his heart. “I come completely free of judgement. I want you to recover more than you do.”
Sunggyu shakes his head. “You’re both idiots.”
To Sungyeol’s credit, he’s a lot more reserved and quiet than Sunggyu ever remembers him being. Maybe being next to someone like Woohyun just made him seem louder- have to be louder. Or maybe it’s circumstance. Sunggyu never thought much of Sungyeol’s ability to compartmentalise, but sitting in a circle listening to broken people retrace exactly how they came to be so broken is probably dense enough to sink right to the bottom of the most unaffected person. Except Sunggyu, apparently. But it’s not that he’s apathetic. If he’s being honest with himself, it’s because like almost everybody else here, he’s only a little self-absorbed.
Maybe that’s why when Sunggyu first walked into the room to see Sungyeol with an arm around Woohyun’s shoulder, it was his seventh meeting with Sungyeol that he remembered first and clearest. They hadn’t even met in person, but in the same way he can still feel the ache in his shoulders from when Woohyun had pushed his way into the room all those years ago; can still feel Woohyun’s hand wrapping around his neck like it’s a scarf he’s always wearing; feel his lips mouthing ”Relax, okay? It’s not your fault if you couldn’t stop it.”; he could hear Sungyeol’s voice from Woohyun’s discarded phone on the floor that night, yelling “Fine, don’t listen to me Woohyun. You chose him, so go fuck him. Do whatever you want.” like he was shouting it right at Sunggyu’s face.
“I…” Sunggyu’s speaking. He’s standing up. Sungyeol is looking straight towards him.
“Do you want me to prompt you?” Soojung offers when he’s been quiet for too long. God, her can-do front is so fake it’s transparent, but Sunggyu’s thankful for it. He nods, and Soojung clears her throat. “What do you think lead to you to forming a unhealthy relationship with your dog?”
Sungjong snickers, but it’s not him Sunggyu owes an honest answer to. “I think it was…” he pauses to take a shaky breath. “He was always there, I think. I’m really… I’m used to being in control, I don’t know, I guess it comes from being a bit of a perfectionist. It’s not that I controlled Dubu- that’s his name, by the way. I think it was just nice to have somebody there who wanted my affection, or went out of their way to seek it out. I liked taking care of him too, I liked being able to I don’t know… Alright, yeah, feel in control that way. He was a little bit like medicine. He was there everyday, there were some obviously irritating side-effects, like I think I spent more on food for him than I did for myself, but I accepted it all without thinking. Then, when he left, when I stopped taking the medicine- that’s when I noticed. Noticed the difference it all made.”
He blows a thin strand of air through pursed lips to try and ground himself. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, not applause or anything, but it feels weird, wrong, to come to finding himself standing in the same room, in front of the same people. Sungyeol looks confused, and Sunggyu feels embarrassment trickle down from the top of his head and pool in his gut.
“Can I go to the bathroom?” Sunggyu asks, not wanting to be alive any longer. Soojung is about to nod her assent, until she spots Woohyun slouched in his chair with his hand up and says, “Can you answer Woohyun-ssi’s question first?”
Sunggyu opens his mouth to refuse, but ends up blurting out, “Sure.”
Woohyun looks conflicted, like he didn’t really want Sunggyu to end up saying yes. “What colour was your dog?” he asks.
Sunggyu’s recall ability momentarily blanks out. He shakes his head until the right word settles itself at the front of his memory. “White,” he answers. Dirty white, actually. Like the colour of the snow after Sunggyu had trekked all over it. Like the colour of Sunggyu’s sheets if they’d been a canvas, and Woohyun a brush.
“What’s this?” Dongwoo asks, standing in front of Sunggyu and the television. Sunggyu lets out an annoyed grunt and strains his neck to try and see past him.
“I don’t know Dongwoo, go see a doctor,” Sunggyu dismisses. “Amy already has a ring, she doesn’t need to catch further proof of commitment.”
“Funny,” Dongwoo snorts, and then drops something on the coffee table that's large enough to make a loud noise. “I mean this. What's this?”
Sunggyu crinkles his forehead, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. “Oh right.” He blinks. “I painted that. It’s Haeundae Beach. Remember when we went there on holiday after graduation?”
“You painted it,” Dongwoo says, astonished. A reaction that would make more sense to Sunggyu if they hadn’t been friends since high school and all the way through University where Sunggyu had graduated with a Fine Arts degree. “Why was it in the same box as my shoes?”
“I wanted you to have something to remember me by in your new home,” Sunggyu explains, shrugging.
Dongwoo’s eyes look watery, and half of Sunggyu tenses up into alarm, and half of him softens into something dangerously sentimental. “Geez,” Sunggyu whines, pushing himself up from the couch to wrap Dongwoo in a hug. “You’re the one moving out, why are you being this way?”
“You’re so annoying,” Dongwoo gulps into crook of Sunggyu’s shoulder. “I’ve been feeling really guilty and I don’t know. I’m glad you’re painting again.”
Right. Sunggyu had forgotten he’d stopped in the first place. It wasn’t like it was a conscious decision after all.
“I’m getting there,” Sunggyu resolves, playing with the hair on the back of Dongwoo’s neck. “Slowly.”
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