Countdown -- 11.1
Measure it out in inches; Jinki/Minho; PG-13
note: Back to writing at more normal hours of the day~ And, er, yeah, there are some really awkward sentences in here. Anyhow, I've finished the first draft of the rest of the story, so things should be wrapped up tomorrow or the day after.
prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10.1 | 10.2 | 11.1
Chapter eleven -- part i
In the following two months, the two of us continued to meet up from time to time.
We were never much further apart than the length of a text message and so one night stand might have been the wrong label to assign to what we had. But just like partners in a one night stand, there were no rightful titles that we could bestow upon each other. Our relationship could not lay claim to any identity.
It possessed love's addictiveness, but it didn't share love's constraints and it certainly didn't play by love's rules.
I would have called it therapy. Only if it weren't for the fact that most of the time, I imagined it to be what it would feel like to do drugs.
Immensely gratifying and yet destructive.
In some remote corner of my mind, I always wondered if by going through all of this, I was breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces rather than being put back together into something whole and complete. I wondered if once I was broken down into small enough pieces, would that be the instant when I ceased to exist. Would that be the instant when dying ended and death began. I wondered if this was me choosing death or if death was still the one making the choice.
But there had to be something good there, I thought.
There had to be.
As long as it never left me the way that movie did, some part of it had to be good.
Some part of him, had to be good.
......
My physical condition deteriorated with time. I tired more easily, bruised more easily, ran out of breath more easily. I was losing weight and there was no color in my cheeks. But whenever Cigarette questioned me about what was wrong, I would arrange my features into the poker face that I'd learned to put on. I would nonchalantly wave a hand at him and I would say: I've always been like this since I was little. It's normal. If you mind it so much, just fuck off. With each repetition, I got better at this thing call indifference. The undercurrents of irritation went away, I staved off the reflexive urge to shrink into myself, and not a trace of bitterness saw the light of day.
Each time, in response, he would just hold me in his dark eyes for a little while longer than usual. Silently. Carefully. Until I thought he was going to say something more about the matter, something that would irreversibly shatter our nameless relationship.
Thankfully, those words never came.
However, as much as that helped our pretense, it didn't mean anything. Because although he never prodded any further and I never explained in greater detail, gradually, even the blind could see that everything wasn't normal at all.
But he was not my lover, and so he didn't call me out on my lies.
......
Together, we did everything impulsive that we could come up with. It was mostly me sifting through all the stories I knew in search of inspiration for my next unreasonable request and him agreeing easily to go along with my plans. Fairly quickly, what time of the day it was stopped being part of our considerations. And each of our meetings always culminated in his bed. I should have felt somewhat alarmed when one morning I abruptly woke up with the realization that somewhere along the line, it stopped being a peaceful and beautiful thing.
Everything had become purely carnal. Raw, animalistic.
But I wasn't alarmed.
If anything, I was glad.
Maybe I could blame the fever I'd been running at the time for messing with my faculties.
Maybe.
I knew what I was doing.
I was hungrily chasing after what it felt like to be alive. (Or what I imagined it felt like.)
Although it wasn't quite along the lines of jumping out of a plane at an altitude of God knows how many thousands of feet and plunging towards hard cold Mother Earth at one hundred and twenty miles per hour, the object of my pursuit was the same. And the reasoning behind it was the same. Even if in the aftermath, I would feel like I had just gone to Hell and back, I would still insist on observing that insane sort of routine the next time around.
Things between us did slowly change though. Because despite having started off this game with the intention of keeping my weaknesses to myself, gradually, I stopped taking the pains to hide from him what I was going through alone and yet not quite alone.
But he was not my lover, and so he did not try to talk me out of my madness.
......
When Kibum's birthday came around, I went to visit him in person for the first time in a long time. September 23rd, deadline number one. I had to choose whether or not to come clean. On the bus ride to his place, I rehearsed the script of what I was going to say again and again. It wasn't that I was struggling to memorize the words-I never had trouble in that department-I just needed something to occupy my mind with.
Standing on his doorstep, I closed my eyes with a trembling sigh and pressed the doorbell. When I opened my eyes again, what awaited me was the pristine ceiling of a foreign-smelling hospital room.
I could hear unsuccessfully suppressed sniffles coloring the silence.
Kibum, just like that day in the cinema, was crying rivers. Gaze unfocused, he was weakly repeating hyung, hyung like a broken record. Looking at him, I felt so utterly helpless.
I was sorry, so awfully sorry.
When he noticed that I was conscious, he stumbled out of the bedside chair. Changing his mantra to an endless string of thank God, he helped me into a sitting position. After ensuring that I was supported by enough pillows, he handed me a cup of water. It was warm-body temperature I'd say-and tasted rather salty. But water was water; it moistened my parched throat. While drinking, I spotted my bag resting in a corner of the room a few steps away. When Kibum took the nearly empty cup from me, I gestured at the bag and asked him to bring it over.
Maybe he was still in a state of shock, because he meekly complied.
There was not a single word of complaint or interrogation.
No attempt to bargain with me for the truth.
From inside the bag, I withdrew a passbook and a debit card. Running my thumb over the row of embossed numbers that marked the cool surface of the rectangular piece of plastic, I smiled apologetically. Kibum frowned questioningly at me before he lowered his eyes to follow the two objects as I shoved them into his hands. His expression remained perplexed. I poked the passbook and he flipped it open, skeptically looking for the answers that might not be there.
What he found made his eyes go round.
There was only one line of transaction printed neatly inside. A single enormous deposit.
He paused for a moment before an inhuman noise escaped his lips and he wept even harder. What he attempted to say in between the sobs that wracked his entire body was lost as incoherent babble. He gripped the two things in his hands so hard that I was afraid the card was going to snap. He understood, I supposed, or at least he understood the most important part of it.
Me?
I was thankful.
Thankful that Fate was kind enough to give me the final push towards honesty, because I wasn't sure I had the guts to follow through. Thankful that words weren't the only vessel capable of conveying what he had to know, because it was too painful to force such a confession from my own mouth. Thankful that although this was a shared room, there were no other occupants, because for both of us, it was naked moment.
I gathered the mess that was Kibum into my arms and I consoled him, whispering into the bleached locks of his hair all the meaningless words of reassurance that I could think of. It was as if we'd switched our roles, as if I were the visiting relative and he the frightened and distressed patient.
"Remember how I said I hit the jackpot a while back?"
His arms tightened around me, crushing me into his bones. I softly patted his back, again and again, feeling his tears crawling over my skin, running down my neck, soaking through my loose hospital gown. But I didn't cry with him. We stayed together like this, undisturbed, until I was almost sure that the duration of this hug would be best measured in hours.
A passing nurse eventually noticed us and kindly reminded Kibum not to tire me out too much.
Kibum then began croaking out apologies.
I fumbled around for something to say before I murmured a pathetic I'm fine.
I didn't actually use up all the words of reassurance that I could think of.
There was this one particular generic phrase that I cycled back to more often than I would have liked. But each time I opened my mouth and attempted to say it out loud, it would stubbornly lodge itself in the back of my throat. Like an annoying fish bone that refused to be swallowed or spat out.
Everything is going to be okay.
I didn't have the right to say that, did I?
......
chapter 11.2
note: Back to writing at more normal hours of the day~ And, er, yeah, there are some really awkward sentences in here. Anyhow, I've finished the first draft of the rest of the story, so things should be wrapped up tomorrow or the day after.
prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10.1 | 10.2 | 11.1
Chapter eleven -- part i
In the following two months, the two of us continued to meet up from time to time.
We were never much further apart than the length of a text message and so one night stand might have been the wrong label to assign to what we had. But just like partners in a one night stand, there were no rightful titles that we could bestow upon each other. Our relationship could not lay claim to any identity.
It possessed love's addictiveness, but it didn't share love's constraints and it certainly didn't play by love's rules.
I would have called it therapy. Only if it weren't for the fact that most of the time, I imagined it to be what it would feel like to do drugs.
Immensely gratifying and yet destructive.
In some remote corner of my mind, I always wondered if by going through all of this, I was breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces rather than being put back together into something whole and complete. I wondered if once I was broken down into small enough pieces, would that be the instant when I ceased to exist. Would that be the instant when dying ended and death began. I wondered if this was me choosing death or if death was still the one making the choice.
But there had to be something good there, I thought.
There had to be.
As long as it never left me the way that movie did, some part of it had to be good.
Some part of him, had to be good.
......
My physical condition deteriorated with time. I tired more easily, bruised more easily, ran out of breath more easily. I was losing weight and there was no color in my cheeks. But whenever Cigarette questioned me about what was wrong, I would arrange my features into the poker face that I'd learned to put on. I would nonchalantly wave a hand at him and I would say: I've always been like this since I was little. It's normal. If you mind it so much, just fuck off. With each repetition, I got better at this thing call indifference. The undercurrents of irritation went away, I staved off the reflexive urge to shrink into myself, and not a trace of bitterness saw the light of day.
Each time, in response, he would just hold me in his dark eyes for a little while longer than usual. Silently. Carefully. Until I thought he was going to say something more about the matter, something that would irreversibly shatter our nameless relationship.
Thankfully, those words never came.
However, as much as that helped our pretense, it didn't mean anything. Because although he never prodded any further and I never explained in greater detail, gradually, even the blind could see that everything wasn't normal at all.
But he was not my lover, and so he didn't call me out on my lies.
......
Together, we did everything impulsive that we could come up with. It was mostly me sifting through all the stories I knew in search of inspiration for my next unreasonable request and him agreeing easily to go along with my plans. Fairly quickly, what time of the day it was stopped being part of our considerations. And each of our meetings always culminated in his bed. I should have felt somewhat alarmed when one morning I abruptly woke up with the realization that somewhere along the line, it stopped being a peaceful and beautiful thing.
Everything had become purely carnal. Raw, animalistic.
But I wasn't alarmed.
If anything, I was glad.
Maybe I could blame the fever I'd been running at the time for messing with my faculties.
Maybe.
I knew what I was doing.
I was hungrily chasing after what it felt like to be alive. (Or what I imagined it felt like.)
Although it wasn't quite along the lines of jumping out of a plane at an altitude of God knows how many thousands of feet and plunging towards hard cold Mother Earth at one hundred and twenty miles per hour, the object of my pursuit was the same. And the reasoning behind it was the same. Even if in the aftermath, I would feel like I had just gone to Hell and back, I would still insist on observing that insane sort of routine the next time around.
Things between us did slowly change though. Because despite having started off this game with the intention of keeping my weaknesses to myself, gradually, I stopped taking the pains to hide from him what I was going through alone and yet not quite alone.
But he was not my lover, and so he did not try to talk me out of my madness.
......
When Kibum's birthday came around, I went to visit him in person for the first time in a long time. September 23rd, deadline number one. I had to choose whether or not to come clean. On the bus ride to his place, I rehearsed the script of what I was going to say again and again. It wasn't that I was struggling to memorize the words-I never had trouble in that department-I just needed something to occupy my mind with.
Standing on his doorstep, I closed my eyes with a trembling sigh and pressed the doorbell. When I opened my eyes again, what awaited me was the pristine ceiling of a foreign-smelling hospital room.
I could hear unsuccessfully suppressed sniffles coloring the silence.
Kibum, just like that day in the cinema, was crying rivers. Gaze unfocused, he was weakly repeating hyung, hyung like a broken record. Looking at him, I felt so utterly helpless.
I was sorry, so awfully sorry.
When he noticed that I was conscious, he stumbled out of the bedside chair. Changing his mantra to an endless string of thank God, he helped me into a sitting position. After ensuring that I was supported by enough pillows, he handed me a cup of water. It was warm-body temperature I'd say-and tasted rather salty. But water was water; it moistened my parched throat. While drinking, I spotted my bag resting in a corner of the room a few steps away. When Kibum took the nearly empty cup from me, I gestured at the bag and asked him to bring it over.
Maybe he was still in a state of shock, because he meekly complied.
There was not a single word of complaint or interrogation.
No attempt to bargain with me for the truth.
From inside the bag, I withdrew a passbook and a debit card. Running my thumb over the row of embossed numbers that marked the cool surface of the rectangular piece of plastic, I smiled apologetically. Kibum frowned questioningly at me before he lowered his eyes to follow the two objects as I shoved them into his hands. His expression remained perplexed. I poked the passbook and he flipped it open, skeptically looking for the answers that might not be there.
What he found made his eyes go round.
There was only one line of transaction printed neatly inside. A single enormous deposit.
He paused for a moment before an inhuman noise escaped his lips and he wept even harder. What he attempted to say in between the sobs that wracked his entire body was lost as incoherent babble. He gripped the two things in his hands so hard that I was afraid the card was going to snap. He understood, I supposed, or at least he understood the most important part of it.
Me?
I was thankful.
Thankful that Fate was kind enough to give me the final push towards honesty, because I wasn't sure I had the guts to follow through. Thankful that words weren't the only vessel capable of conveying what he had to know, because it was too painful to force such a confession from my own mouth. Thankful that although this was a shared room, there were no other occupants, because for both of us, it was naked moment.
I gathered the mess that was Kibum into my arms and I consoled him, whispering into the bleached locks of his hair all the meaningless words of reassurance that I could think of. It was as if we'd switched our roles, as if I were the visiting relative and he the frightened and distressed patient.
"Remember how I said I hit the jackpot a while back?"
His arms tightened around me, crushing me into his bones. I softly patted his back, again and again, feeling his tears crawling over my skin, running down my neck, soaking through my loose hospital gown. But I didn't cry with him. We stayed together like this, undisturbed, until I was almost sure that the duration of this hug would be best measured in hours.
A passing nurse eventually noticed us and kindly reminded Kibum not to tire me out too much.
Kibum then began croaking out apologies.
I fumbled around for something to say before I murmured a pathetic I'm fine.
I didn't actually use up all the words of reassurance that I could think of.
There was this one particular generic phrase that I cycled back to more often than I would have liked. But each time I opened my mouth and attempted to say it out loud, it would stubbornly lodge itself in the back of my throat. Like an annoying fish bone that refused to be swallowed or spat out.
Everything is going to be okay.
I didn't have the right to say that, did I?
......
chapter 11.2