✫
█ ✫ ECHO ··· ( ch 2 of ? )
█ pairing: ontae, with eventual implied jongkey
█ rating: pg-15+ ( rating may change - this chapter rated: g )
█ genre: a/u - supernatural - romance
✫ ··· Chapter Index
Chapter One
The change in him wasn't instant. Even after school had started again just before the end of August, Jinki seemed to be the same as he always was; solitary. It seemed that he was still satisfied to be an observer, rather than a participant in his own young life, and he made no immediate effort to integrate himself with his classmates.
What was changing, however, was Jinki's view of the classroom. He used to think that the other children were intimidating, bordering on frightening; the prospect of talking to them at length made him too nervous to even think about it. He had confessed this to Taemin, who had pretty much been ready to laugh as if it were a joke - but the sound had caught in his mouth before he could let out so much as a chuckle because of the look on Jinki's face. He had been staring at the ground again, but this time his face was serious; his lips were set in a firm line, which thinned them harshly, and it looked as if he were about to cry. Taemin had quickly realized that Jinki didn't just think the other kids were scary - for some reason, he knew they were. He didn't press the matter, though - and Jinki never elaborated on it. It was a subject quickly dropped in favour of things that didn't hurt so much to think about.
The truth was, Jinki was beginning to wonder if his classmates were as terrifying as he had always perceived them to be. More than ever, his desire to join in on the friendship he had always inwardly longed to share gnawed away at his fear, wearing it thinner and thinner as time went on. For three months, Taemin had been his secret friend - his only friend. Jinki had forgotten what it felt like to have friends; how much fun it was, and how happy a friend could make you just by being there. Every day since school had begun, he'd crept closer and closer to the ragged edges of the memories that had held him at bay, kept him from reaching out for friendship, and left him more lonely than alone. They still ghosted around his head, half-formed shadows licking at the corners of his eyes when he least expected it and catching him off guard, but at least now he knew that not everyone was as scary as his subconscious made them out to be.
Taemin, after all, wasn't scary in the least.
Even now, each night, he would wait until his mother had finally drifted to sleep in the room down the hall. Once he was certain he wouldn't be caught, he'd flick on the lamp beside his bed, pluck a book from his collection, and read for an hour or two. Jinki had learned to stop looking at the time. There was no real set pattern to when - or if - Taemin would find his way to Jinki's room. Instead, he laid quietly in his diminutive western-style bed, waiting for the house to drift off to sleep without him, and used a book to judge the time. If it was long, he would read the first ten or fifteen chapters; if it was shorter, then he'd read the whole thing. If he'd finished his pre-determined quota, and Taemin wasn't grinning in that typical impish way at him from across the room, then Jinki figured he wasn't going to come that night.
It had crossed his mind to ask Taemin how he was doing it, but the one time he'd asked, the other little boy admitted that he had no idea how, or if it happened.
“It's weird,” the smaller boy had said, his expression thoughtful, “But when I wind up here, I don't really remember anything. I know certain things - there are things I'm really, really sure of - but I forget as soon as I think of them. You know, like when you wake up after a dream,” he sat straighter and crossed his legs underneath him; the two of them were surrounded by the toys they had spread out on Jinki's bedroom floor, “And you know you were dreaming, but as soon as you try to remember it you just can't? Then a few minutes go by, and you can't remember any of it at all.”
Jinki had nodded sagely at that, his face so serious that Taemin had actually giggled. Taemin's laughs were contagious - Jinki always broke into a smile when he laughed, no matter how hard he tried not to. He simply couldn't help it.
Sometimes it bothered Jinki that he knew so little about Taemin. There was never any talk of 'imaginary' friends - they discovered very quickly that neither was imaging the other when Taemin had split his lip after tripping over the rug and falling hard into the foot of Jinki's bed. The amount of blood alone was proof enough of that - imaginary people don't bleed. Jinki was also sure the other boy wasn't lying about anything he told him, but that really just made him feel worse. Taemin wanted to know everything there was to know about him, but Jinki was not one to really like to talk about himself - it made him kind of uncomfortable to be the centre of attention like that. Relentless, Taemin had managed to get Jinki to speak openly only a handful of times, and the information he had offered had been flimsy and shallow. Skimming the top, if you will. They both knew that these little morsels would never satisfy Taemin forever, but they would placate him until Jinki was more willing to talk about himself. Jinki only wished Taemin would talk about himself in return, but he seemed unable to do so. He'd start, speaking confidently about something that had happened that day, or a memory he liked; but just as quickly he would pause, words suddenly lost to him, and he'd look at Jinki apologetically.
Wherever Taemin came from, it seemed that he left most of what he knew about himself behind when he arrived. He knew he lived somewhere, with other people he assumed were his parents, but his relations to these things were like mist - obviously there, but completely intangible to him. There had been one night in the not-so distant past where Jinki had been telling Taemin about the ducklings they were hatching in the classroom - pearly white eggs, incubating in a big plastic case by the window - and Taemin had tried to tell him something about a baby bird he'd found in return, but no sooner had he mentioned the animal when his face fell. It was gone. Crestfallen, he repeated the introduction to his unformed story again, hoping to trigger the memory into existence; again and again he repeated it, his voice growing thinner each time, until finally he'd given up and burst into frustrated tears. Shocked, Jinki had scrambled for a box of tissue and pressed it into his friend's hands, absolutely at a loss as to what to do. As Taemin sobbed in to a fisted tissue, Jinki had scooted over, crouched beside him, and done what his mother always did when he cried; he moved his small hand in a wide, slow circle across Taemin's back, and hummed softly until Taemin had cried himself out.
Jinki had decided not to bring up the ducklings again, no matter how much he liked them.
It was strange, the way both knew how far the other could go - willing or not - into their own issues. Even though they were both so young, it was like they understood the weights of their problems inherently, and there was a wordless mutual understanding that there was a line for each of them that they were not willing to cross. Not yet, at least. Taemin, though, seemed to be more willing to help Jinki over his own line; Jinki sometimes thought he was just nosy, but would immediately banish the thought and admonish himself for even considering it. Taemin was his friend - of course he was going to worry about him, and want to help him out. Despite that, though, Jinki was thoroughly uncomfortable tonight.
“I can't be your only friend forever,” Taemin was saying, his voice somehow soft and firm all at once - sympathetic, but still insistent.
“Yes you can.” Quietly stubborn as always, Jinki was looking everywhere but at Taemin while he spoke, and that expression was on his face again. The one that made it look like he'd been kicked in the stomach and left in the rain on his own - the one that Taemin absolutely hated.
“Jinki, I know you're scared,” he offered, moving to sit closer as he spoke. Taemin could hear the slight hitch in Jinki's breath that signalled he was trying his hardest not to cry at the thought of it. “I can tell you are. But it's okay. Being scared isn't bad - it's good. It means...” Soon he wanted to cry, too, as the advice he'd been trying to give Jinki floated off and faded like a ripple on still water. Someone had offered the very same advice to him - and now, he was going to have to tell Jinki without knowing what to say. He racked his brains for a moment, trying to remember what he wanted to say, and why he'd wanted to say it. Finally, he spoke again.
“It's not a bad thing. Everybody gets scared, even of things other people think are stupid. All I'm saying is, if you give them the chance, there are people who are going to like you as much as I like you. They'll want to be your friend, too. Not everybody, maybe,” Taemin felt like he knew that pretty well, though he couldn't place why, “But they won't matter when you find people who do.”
Jinki gave a deep, long sniff, still fighting against his urge to cry. He needed a tissue rather badly, feeling his sinuses plugging, but he was certain that if he acknowledged the need to blow his nose that he would lose to his tears, and they'd fall more freely than he wanted. Instead, he settled for pulling the sleeve of his pyjama top down over his fist and wiping at his face with it - kind of gross, but better than nothing. “It's hard,” he said, voice cracking, “It's... really hard.”
“Yeah,” Taemin offered Jinki a small smile, which the other boy tried his hardest to return. Sighing, he glanced out of the tall, narrow window, framed by those spaceman curtains Jinki hated so much but Taemin sort of liked. He could feel Jinki looking at him, but for some reason, the dim halo of the street light outside held his attention instead. “Sometimes it's so hard, it hurts.”
He wasn't sure why, but he was absolutely certain of that. Dead certain. Judging by the hearty sniff and shaky exhaling of breath beside him, Taemin was pretty sure Jinki knew exactly what he meant, even if Taemin himself did not.
··· ✫ ···
Tired of having to stay behind to supervise him by himself in the classroom, Jinki's teacher had insisted that he go outside for recess for once, and play with the other kids. Jinki had given his stack of books a warm, lingering glance, then turned his attention to the kids running back and forth outside, throwing leaves at one another. The seasons had started to change, and the trees in the school yard were heavy with red and gold leaves just waiting for an opportunity to dance to the grass below on the right wind. His teacher had shooed him outside without pity, and watched him expectantly. Giving her a brief, pleading look and receiving only a firm, unyielding expression in return, Jinki gave up on his puppy-dog look and dragged his feet out to the playground. He parked himself under an evergreen and pulled out a few blades of grass, examined them, then started tying them together to make a sort of squiggly rope.
The grass string he was making wasn't even as long as his arm yet when a soccer ball rolled into his area of the playground and bumped against his feet. He stared at it, wide-eyed, and plucked it off the ground. He heard footfalls coming towards him and looked up at the older boy jogging up to him, obviously after the stray ball. Without a peep, Jinki held the ball out for him to take, which he did.
“Thanks,” he gasped, breath short from running. He bent slightly to catch his breath, examining Jinki has he did so. The younger squirmed a little under the scrutiny, but the older boy just smiled at him in a lopsided fashion. “Do you wanna play? You can be on my team, if you want.”
Jinki's heart leapt into the back of his throat, then fell like a stone to the bottom of his stomach. He could feel his hands go clammy, and there was a buzzing in his ears. Shadows - those ever-present, not-quite-there shadows - licked at the edges of his vision. He wanted to throw up. Really badly.
He couldn't do it.
He just shook his head slowly in response. Smile fading a little, the older boy just shrugged a bit at him, before turning on his heel and rejoining his friends at the centre of the field.
Exhaling a shaky breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, Jinki stood up, brushed some loose grass from his pants, and marched back towards the school. Sneaking past the teachers was simple - they were chatting amongst themselves and not really paying attention anyhow. Slipping back inside the school, he made his way back to his second-grade classroom, plopped himself back down in his fortress of books, and did his best not to cry.
God, he was such a coward.
··· ✫ ···
It had finally started to snow, and the build-up had come in the form of three days of straight snow. Jinki looked outside, staring as more fat white flake clusters pooled in the corners of his window frame like spun sugar. They were taunting him with their jovial fluffiness - You have exams to study for, Jinki, too bad for you! Don't you wish you could come out and play with us? And oh, how he wished he could. He was only twelve - his birthday had been only a week prior, and his stomach still flipped ominously at the mention of birthday cake - so why should exams matter so much? But Jinki had his own pride, and he had set himself a standard he felt obligated to keep. Besides, this wasn't just any old exam. His results would dictate which middle school he got into, and he definitely didn't want to end up in his back-up school. Apparently they stuffed new kids in to their own lockers there. There was no way Jinki wanted to get crammed into a locker like a canned sardine. Snow or no snow, he was finishing this set of practise questions. Snow or no snow.
Snow. Snow angels. Snowballs. Snow forts....
No, no forts. Math - math first. Division of fractions. Okay. One third, divided by one fifth...
Of a snowman...
Jinki groaned and let his head fall heavily onto his textbook in defeat. “This isn't working.”
It was times like this he wished Taemin would visit in the daytime. He had thought to ask at one time if he even could, years ago now - thinking of it that way made him feel really old, for some reason - but considering how little either of them knew about how their visit actually worked, he figured it would've been a moot point anyhow. If he were here, Taemin would perch himself on the edge of Jinki's desk, watching him flip fractions and common denominators, offering a running commentary Jinki insisted distracted him, but didn't really. Taemin would tell him for the upteenth time that going to a new school could be a fresh start, away from his fear of people, and Jinki would nod like he agreed even though he didn't. Once he'd dropped that topic, he'd ask questions, picking out individual problems and having Jinki explain them to him, then laughing when Jinki realized he had done it incorrectly and vigorously erased the incorrect answer as if it insulted him.
Chuckling at the thought, Jinki gave his worksheet a searching look. He obviously couldn't concentrate, but he didn't want to reward his lack of enthusiasm by rolling around in the snow, no matter how badly he wanted to. Resigned to the consequences of his actions, he pushed his chair back and decided to make himself hot chocolate instead. Hopefully, something warm and wintery would quell his desire for the white stuff in his backyard, and give him enough release from the temptation to finish his work. He gave his snow-frosted window one last, drawn-out look, then let himself out of his room.
His slippers made his footfalls dull and soft, like walking on cotton, and the emptiness of the hallway magnified the hollowness of the sound. Plodding down the stairs to the kitchen, Jinki called out, “Umma?” But the only answer he got in return was the sound of the mantle clock in the living room - a heavy tick-tock; tick-tock; tick-tock that reverberated throughout most of the house. He found a more direct answer to his query in the kitchen, secured to the cool laminate countertop with a bowl of fake fruit.
Emergency! Had to run to work. Will be home late. Don't leave the house by yourself! There's soup in the fridge - careful using the stove. Sorry, baby. Love you - Umma.
Sighing, Jinki slipped the note in to the pocket of his sweatpants, then pulled a saucepan from the cupboard and set it on the stove. He opened the fridge, pulled the milk off the top shelf, and poured a generous amount in the pot before flicking on the burner, not bothering to measure how much he was using. He'd done this too many times to need to measure the ingredients - he knew by eye how much he had in there. He had to go through a few shelves in the pantry before he found a bar of chocolate; semisweet, and though he liked milk chocolate better in drink form it would have to do. Absently, he wondered if it would've been better to bring his worksheet down with him, but he instantly thought better of that idea. The last thing he wanted to do was scrape burned milk off the bottom of the pan, and the stupid thing would probably boil over even with him watching it like a hawk. It was just how things seemed to work out for him.
A noise above his head caught his attention as he was breaking the bar of chocolate into chunks. Had something fallen? He listened for a moment, but when he heard nothing more he figured that must've been it, and dismissed it. When he heard the noise again, however, he froze, listening intently. The ceiling above him creaked slightly, slowly, as if someone was tiptoeing through the rooms above him, trying to distribute their weight as evenly as possible before taking a full step to avoid being heard.
Ladle in hand, Jinki crept as quietly as he could from the kitchen and in to the main floor hallway. Cautiously, he looked up from the bottom of the stairs, listening to the muffled, extended creaks the second floor hallway was making. He steeled himself, holding the ladle like a baseball bat, and started up the stairs. Unlike the sneak on the upper floor of his house, Jinki knew by heart what each stair sounded like, which ones squeaked too loud, and which ones were solid enough not to give up his approach. Adjusting his grip on the ladle, Jinki reached the top of the stairs and, to his dismay, he could hear the milk in the kitchen hiss and pop as it boiled over on to the stovetop. The urge to groan out loud was strong, but he held it in - he'd worry about it later.
Thankful for the muffling effect of his slippers, Jinki padded carefully down the hallway, sticking close to the wall as he did so. The door to his room was open - he hadn't left it that way. The door to his mother's office was also ajar - he peeked inside, but there was nothing. The door to his parent's bedroom was shut, so he ignored it for now. That only left the bathroom. Looking at the gap beneath the floor and the bottom of the door, he could see a dark shadow flutter across the tile, then stop. He heard a shuffling, slipping sound, a thump, and then a stuttering hiccup.
His body was moving before his brain had registered the fact that someone was crying in his bathroom, and put two and two together - his hand was on the knob and was swinging the door open, and he was looking at the space between the sink and the toilet just as his mind caught up with the rest of him. “Taemin, is that -?”
The boy was a mess. He was raking his hands through his hair, his whole body shaking with the remains of a violent tremor. His face was pale, completely drained of colour, save for the red splotches that stung the skin high on his cheeks. His eyes were swollen and red - he'd been crying for a long time, but Jinki had only started hearing sounds a few moments ago. Just how long had he been crying before he arrived? Startled when the door opened, Taemin had nearly jumped out of his skin, but remained curled into himself and made no effort to move. The most he did was flick his eyes to Jinki's, see the worry in his friend's face, and return to staring at the opposite wall of the narrow room as he choked on a sob. It seemed he had cried himself dry, but he was still too shaken to stop the heaving and gasping associated with the act.
The ladle fell to the ground with a clatter as Jinki dropped to his knees beside Taemin. His first instinct was to drag the boy out of the corner and hug him, but he hesitated - for some reason, he was pretty sure touching Taemin right now wouldn't be the best thing to do. “Taemin,” he started again, speaking thickly around the sudden lump in his throat, “What happened?”
The other boy hiccoughed a few times, trying to gather enough hair in his lungs to speak with, the skin across his knuckles tight and white against the pressure of his fisted hands. “I don't - I don't know, Jinki,” he sputtered around his erratic breath, “I don't remember a-anything, there's just this wall, and it's big and tall and w-white and - and I can smell metal, lots of metal, like it's hot or so-something, but there's nothing else, it's all foggy and not really there but I know it was scary, Jinki - I-I'm scared, I just wanted to get out, I wanted to see you, I don't know what happened or how I got here, but I d-don't want to go back.” Taemin suddenly scrubbed violently at his face, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyesockets. Jinki moved to stop him - to pull his hands away from his face and hold them at his sides, if he had to - but the moment the thought entered his mind Taemin had thrown himself at his chest, clinging at the wool of his sweater like a lifeline and burying his face into his shoulder as a wave of fresh tears scalded his eyes.
“Jinki, I can't go back again, I don't want to, I really don't, but I don't know how to stay here.” Taemin was babbling almost without breathing, taking great gulps of air over his own words. Jinki put his arms awkwardly around Taemin's shoulders, rubbing slow, steady circles over the surface of his back as the boy shook. “I just want to stay with you but I can't because I don't know h-how!”
Jinki didn't know what to say. And, really, what could he have said? There were probably not enough words in the world to calm Taemin down, to make him forget the fear that strangled him even now, and kept his body rigid and trembling as he cried. Instead, Jinki held his only friend - the best friend he'd ever had - both of them splayed out on the cold tile floor of the cramped upstairs bathroom, silently rubbing circles across his back and carefully brushing away the sweat-soaked hair that clung to Taemin's forehead as he sobbed endlessly into Jinki's reindeer sweater.
He was only twelve. He didn't know what else to do.
Jinki just prayed it would be enough.
█ pairing: ontae, with eventual implied jongkey
█ rating: pg-15+ ( rating may change - this chapter rated: g )
█ genre: a/u - supernatural - romance
✫ ··· Chapter Index
Chapter One
The change in him wasn't instant. Even after school had started again just before the end of August, Jinki seemed to be the same as he always was; solitary. It seemed that he was still satisfied to be an observer, rather than a participant in his own young life, and he made no immediate effort to integrate himself with his classmates.
What was changing, however, was Jinki's view of the classroom. He used to think that the other children were intimidating, bordering on frightening; the prospect of talking to them at length made him too nervous to even think about it. He had confessed this to Taemin, who had pretty much been ready to laugh as if it were a joke - but the sound had caught in his mouth before he could let out so much as a chuckle because of the look on Jinki's face. He had been staring at the ground again, but this time his face was serious; his lips were set in a firm line, which thinned them harshly, and it looked as if he were about to cry. Taemin had quickly realized that Jinki didn't just think the other kids were scary - for some reason, he knew they were. He didn't press the matter, though - and Jinki never elaborated on it. It was a subject quickly dropped in favour of things that didn't hurt so much to think about.
The truth was, Jinki was beginning to wonder if his classmates were as terrifying as he had always perceived them to be. More than ever, his desire to join in on the friendship he had always inwardly longed to share gnawed away at his fear, wearing it thinner and thinner as time went on. For three months, Taemin had been his secret friend - his only friend. Jinki had forgotten what it felt like to have friends; how much fun it was, and how happy a friend could make you just by being there. Every day since school had begun, he'd crept closer and closer to the ragged edges of the memories that had held him at bay, kept him from reaching out for friendship, and left him more lonely than alone. They still ghosted around his head, half-formed shadows licking at the corners of his eyes when he least expected it and catching him off guard, but at least now he knew that not everyone was as scary as his subconscious made them out to be.
Taemin, after all, wasn't scary in the least.
Even now, each night, he would wait until his mother had finally drifted to sleep in the room down the hall. Once he was certain he wouldn't be caught, he'd flick on the lamp beside his bed, pluck a book from his collection, and read for an hour or two. Jinki had learned to stop looking at the time. There was no real set pattern to when - or if - Taemin would find his way to Jinki's room. Instead, he laid quietly in his diminutive western-style bed, waiting for the house to drift off to sleep without him, and used a book to judge the time. If it was long, he would read the first ten or fifteen chapters; if it was shorter, then he'd read the whole thing. If he'd finished his pre-determined quota, and Taemin wasn't grinning in that typical impish way at him from across the room, then Jinki figured he wasn't going to come that night.
It had crossed his mind to ask Taemin how he was doing it, but the one time he'd asked, the other little boy admitted that he had no idea how, or if it happened.
“It's weird,” the smaller boy had said, his expression thoughtful, “But when I wind up here, I don't really remember anything. I know certain things - there are things I'm really, really sure of - but I forget as soon as I think of them. You know, like when you wake up after a dream,” he sat straighter and crossed his legs underneath him; the two of them were surrounded by the toys they had spread out on Jinki's bedroom floor, “And you know you were dreaming, but as soon as you try to remember it you just can't? Then a few minutes go by, and you can't remember any of it at all.”
Jinki had nodded sagely at that, his face so serious that Taemin had actually giggled. Taemin's laughs were contagious - Jinki always broke into a smile when he laughed, no matter how hard he tried not to. He simply couldn't help it.
Sometimes it bothered Jinki that he knew so little about Taemin. There was never any talk of 'imaginary' friends - they discovered very quickly that neither was imaging the other when Taemin had split his lip after tripping over the rug and falling hard into the foot of Jinki's bed. The amount of blood alone was proof enough of that - imaginary people don't bleed. Jinki was also sure the other boy wasn't lying about anything he told him, but that really just made him feel worse. Taemin wanted to know everything there was to know about him, but Jinki was not one to really like to talk about himself - it made him kind of uncomfortable to be the centre of attention like that. Relentless, Taemin had managed to get Jinki to speak openly only a handful of times, and the information he had offered had been flimsy and shallow. Skimming the top, if you will. They both knew that these little morsels would never satisfy Taemin forever, but they would placate him until Jinki was more willing to talk about himself. Jinki only wished Taemin would talk about himself in return, but he seemed unable to do so. He'd start, speaking confidently about something that had happened that day, or a memory he liked; but just as quickly he would pause, words suddenly lost to him, and he'd look at Jinki apologetically.
Wherever Taemin came from, it seemed that he left most of what he knew about himself behind when he arrived. He knew he lived somewhere, with other people he assumed were his parents, but his relations to these things were like mist - obviously there, but completely intangible to him. There had been one night in the not-so distant past where Jinki had been telling Taemin about the ducklings they were hatching in the classroom - pearly white eggs, incubating in a big plastic case by the window - and Taemin had tried to tell him something about a baby bird he'd found in return, but no sooner had he mentioned the animal when his face fell. It was gone. Crestfallen, he repeated the introduction to his unformed story again, hoping to trigger the memory into existence; again and again he repeated it, his voice growing thinner each time, until finally he'd given up and burst into frustrated tears. Shocked, Jinki had scrambled for a box of tissue and pressed it into his friend's hands, absolutely at a loss as to what to do. As Taemin sobbed in to a fisted tissue, Jinki had scooted over, crouched beside him, and done what his mother always did when he cried; he moved his small hand in a wide, slow circle across Taemin's back, and hummed softly until Taemin had cried himself out.
Jinki had decided not to bring up the ducklings again, no matter how much he liked them.
It was strange, the way both knew how far the other could go - willing or not - into their own issues. Even though they were both so young, it was like they understood the weights of their problems inherently, and there was a wordless mutual understanding that there was a line for each of them that they were not willing to cross. Not yet, at least. Taemin, though, seemed to be more willing to help Jinki over his own line; Jinki sometimes thought he was just nosy, but would immediately banish the thought and admonish himself for even considering it. Taemin was his friend - of course he was going to worry about him, and want to help him out. Despite that, though, Jinki was thoroughly uncomfortable tonight.
“I can't be your only friend forever,” Taemin was saying, his voice somehow soft and firm all at once - sympathetic, but still insistent.
“Yes you can.” Quietly stubborn as always, Jinki was looking everywhere but at Taemin while he spoke, and that expression was on his face again. The one that made it look like he'd been kicked in the stomach and left in the rain on his own - the one that Taemin absolutely hated.
“Jinki, I know you're scared,” he offered, moving to sit closer as he spoke. Taemin could hear the slight hitch in Jinki's breath that signalled he was trying his hardest not to cry at the thought of it. “I can tell you are. But it's okay. Being scared isn't bad - it's good. It means...” Soon he wanted to cry, too, as the advice he'd been trying to give Jinki floated off and faded like a ripple on still water. Someone had offered the very same advice to him - and now, he was going to have to tell Jinki without knowing what to say. He racked his brains for a moment, trying to remember what he wanted to say, and why he'd wanted to say it. Finally, he spoke again.
“It's not a bad thing. Everybody gets scared, even of things other people think are stupid. All I'm saying is, if you give them the chance, there are people who are going to like you as much as I like you. They'll want to be your friend, too. Not everybody, maybe,” Taemin felt like he knew that pretty well, though he couldn't place why, “But they won't matter when you find people who do.”
Jinki gave a deep, long sniff, still fighting against his urge to cry. He needed a tissue rather badly, feeling his sinuses plugging, but he was certain that if he acknowledged the need to blow his nose that he would lose to his tears, and they'd fall more freely than he wanted. Instead, he settled for pulling the sleeve of his pyjama top down over his fist and wiping at his face with it - kind of gross, but better than nothing. “It's hard,” he said, voice cracking, “It's... really hard.”
“Yeah,” Taemin offered Jinki a small smile, which the other boy tried his hardest to return. Sighing, he glanced out of the tall, narrow window, framed by those spaceman curtains Jinki hated so much but Taemin sort of liked. He could feel Jinki looking at him, but for some reason, the dim halo of the street light outside held his attention instead. “Sometimes it's so hard, it hurts.”
He wasn't sure why, but he was absolutely certain of that. Dead certain. Judging by the hearty sniff and shaky exhaling of breath beside him, Taemin was pretty sure Jinki knew exactly what he meant, even if Taemin himself did not.
··· ✫ ···
Tired of having to stay behind to supervise him by himself in the classroom, Jinki's teacher had insisted that he go outside for recess for once, and play with the other kids. Jinki had given his stack of books a warm, lingering glance, then turned his attention to the kids running back and forth outside, throwing leaves at one another. The seasons had started to change, and the trees in the school yard were heavy with red and gold leaves just waiting for an opportunity to dance to the grass below on the right wind. His teacher had shooed him outside without pity, and watched him expectantly. Giving her a brief, pleading look and receiving only a firm, unyielding expression in return, Jinki gave up on his puppy-dog look and dragged his feet out to the playground. He parked himself under an evergreen and pulled out a few blades of grass, examined them, then started tying them together to make a sort of squiggly rope.
The grass string he was making wasn't even as long as his arm yet when a soccer ball rolled into his area of the playground and bumped against his feet. He stared at it, wide-eyed, and plucked it off the ground. He heard footfalls coming towards him and looked up at the older boy jogging up to him, obviously after the stray ball. Without a peep, Jinki held the ball out for him to take, which he did.
“Thanks,” he gasped, breath short from running. He bent slightly to catch his breath, examining Jinki has he did so. The younger squirmed a little under the scrutiny, but the older boy just smiled at him in a lopsided fashion. “Do you wanna play? You can be on my team, if you want.”
Jinki's heart leapt into the back of his throat, then fell like a stone to the bottom of his stomach. He could feel his hands go clammy, and there was a buzzing in his ears. Shadows - those ever-present, not-quite-there shadows - licked at the edges of his vision. He wanted to throw up. Really badly.
He couldn't do it.
He just shook his head slowly in response. Smile fading a little, the older boy just shrugged a bit at him, before turning on his heel and rejoining his friends at the centre of the field.
Exhaling a shaky breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, Jinki stood up, brushed some loose grass from his pants, and marched back towards the school. Sneaking past the teachers was simple - they were chatting amongst themselves and not really paying attention anyhow. Slipping back inside the school, he made his way back to his second-grade classroom, plopped himself back down in his fortress of books, and did his best not to cry.
God, he was such a coward.
··· ✫ ···
It had finally started to snow, and the build-up had come in the form of three days of straight snow. Jinki looked outside, staring as more fat white flake clusters pooled in the corners of his window frame like spun sugar. They were taunting him with their jovial fluffiness - You have exams to study for, Jinki, too bad for you! Don't you wish you could come out and play with us? And oh, how he wished he could. He was only twelve - his birthday had been only a week prior, and his stomach still flipped ominously at the mention of birthday cake - so why should exams matter so much? But Jinki had his own pride, and he had set himself a standard he felt obligated to keep. Besides, this wasn't just any old exam. His results would dictate which middle school he got into, and he definitely didn't want to end up in his back-up school. Apparently they stuffed new kids in to their own lockers there. There was no way Jinki wanted to get crammed into a locker like a canned sardine. Snow or no snow, he was finishing this set of practise questions. Snow or no snow.
Snow. Snow angels. Snowballs. Snow forts....
No, no forts. Math - math first. Division of fractions. Okay. One third, divided by one fifth...
Of a snowman...
Jinki groaned and let his head fall heavily onto his textbook in defeat. “This isn't working.”
It was times like this he wished Taemin would visit in the daytime. He had thought to ask at one time if he even could, years ago now - thinking of it that way made him feel really old, for some reason - but considering how little either of them knew about how their visit actually worked, he figured it would've been a moot point anyhow. If he were here, Taemin would perch himself on the edge of Jinki's desk, watching him flip fractions and common denominators, offering a running commentary Jinki insisted distracted him, but didn't really. Taemin would tell him for the upteenth time that going to a new school could be a fresh start, away from his fear of people, and Jinki would nod like he agreed even though he didn't. Once he'd dropped that topic, he'd ask questions, picking out individual problems and having Jinki explain them to him, then laughing when Jinki realized he had done it incorrectly and vigorously erased the incorrect answer as if it insulted him.
Chuckling at the thought, Jinki gave his worksheet a searching look. He obviously couldn't concentrate, but he didn't want to reward his lack of enthusiasm by rolling around in the snow, no matter how badly he wanted to. Resigned to the consequences of his actions, he pushed his chair back and decided to make himself hot chocolate instead. Hopefully, something warm and wintery would quell his desire for the white stuff in his backyard, and give him enough release from the temptation to finish his work. He gave his snow-frosted window one last, drawn-out look, then let himself out of his room.
His slippers made his footfalls dull and soft, like walking on cotton, and the emptiness of the hallway magnified the hollowness of the sound. Plodding down the stairs to the kitchen, Jinki called out, “Umma?” But the only answer he got in return was the sound of the mantle clock in the living room - a heavy tick-tock; tick-tock; tick-tock that reverberated throughout most of the house. He found a more direct answer to his query in the kitchen, secured to the cool laminate countertop with a bowl of fake fruit.
Emergency! Had to run to work. Will be home late. Don't leave the house by yourself! There's soup in the fridge - careful using the stove. Sorry, baby. Love you - Umma.
Sighing, Jinki slipped the note in to the pocket of his sweatpants, then pulled a saucepan from the cupboard and set it on the stove. He opened the fridge, pulled the milk off the top shelf, and poured a generous amount in the pot before flicking on the burner, not bothering to measure how much he was using. He'd done this too many times to need to measure the ingredients - he knew by eye how much he had in there. He had to go through a few shelves in the pantry before he found a bar of chocolate; semisweet, and though he liked milk chocolate better in drink form it would have to do. Absently, he wondered if it would've been better to bring his worksheet down with him, but he instantly thought better of that idea. The last thing he wanted to do was scrape burned milk off the bottom of the pan, and the stupid thing would probably boil over even with him watching it like a hawk. It was just how things seemed to work out for him.
A noise above his head caught his attention as he was breaking the bar of chocolate into chunks. Had something fallen? He listened for a moment, but when he heard nothing more he figured that must've been it, and dismissed it. When he heard the noise again, however, he froze, listening intently. The ceiling above him creaked slightly, slowly, as if someone was tiptoeing through the rooms above him, trying to distribute their weight as evenly as possible before taking a full step to avoid being heard.
Ladle in hand, Jinki crept as quietly as he could from the kitchen and in to the main floor hallway. Cautiously, he looked up from the bottom of the stairs, listening to the muffled, extended creaks the second floor hallway was making. He steeled himself, holding the ladle like a baseball bat, and started up the stairs. Unlike the sneak on the upper floor of his house, Jinki knew by heart what each stair sounded like, which ones squeaked too loud, and which ones were solid enough not to give up his approach. Adjusting his grip on the ladle, Jinki reached the top of the stairs and, to his dismay, he could hear the milk in the kitchen hiss and pop as it boiled over on to the stovetop. The urge to groan out loud was strong, but he held it in - he'd worry about it later.
Thankful for the muffling effect of his slippers, Jinki padded carefully down the hallway, sticking close to the wall as he did so. The door to his room was open - he hadn't left it that way. The door to his mother's office was also ajar - he peeked inside, but there was nothing. The door to his parent's bedroom was shut, so he ignored it for now. That only left the bathroom. Looking at the gap beneath the floor and the bottom of the door, he could see a dark shadow flutter across the tile, then stop. He heard a shuffling, slipping sound, a thump, and then a stuttering hiccup.
His body was moving before his brain had registered the fact that someone was crying in his bathroom, and put two and two together - his hand was on the knob and was swinging the door open, and he was looking at the space between the sink and the toilet just as his mind caught up with the rest of him. “Taemin, is that -?”
The boy was a mess. He was raking his hands through his hair, his whole body shaking with the remains of a violent tremor. His face was pale, completely drained of colour, save for the red splotches that stung the skin high on his cheeks. His eyes were swollen and red - he'd been crying for a long time, but Jinki had only started hearing sounds a few moments ago. Just how long had he been crying before he arrived? Startled when the door opened, Taemin had nearly jumped out of his skin, but remained curled into himself and made no effort to move. The most he did was flick his eyes to Jinki's, see the worry in his friend's face, and return to staring at the opposite wall of the narrow room as he choked on a sob. It seemed he had cried himself dry, but he was still too shaken to stop the heaving and gasping associated with the act.
The ladle fell to the ground with a clatter as Jinki dropped to his knees beside Taemin. His first instinct was to drag the boy out of the corner and hug him, but he hesitated - for some reason, he was pretty sure touching Taemin right now wouldn't be the best thing to do. “Taemin,” he started again, speaking thickly around the sudden lump in his throat, “What happened?”
The other boy hiccoughed a few times, trying to gather enough hair in his lungs to speak with, the skin across his knuckles tight and white against the pressure of his fisted hands. “I don't - I don't know, Jinki,” he sputtered around his erratic breath, “I don't remember a-anything, there's just this wall, and it's big and tall and w-white and - and I can smell metal, lots of metal, like it's hot or so-something, but there's nothing else, it's all foggy and not really there but I know it was scary, Jinki - I-I'm scared, I just wanted to get out, I wanted to see you, I don't know what happened or how I got here, but I d-don't want to go back.” Taemin suddenly scrubbed violently at his face, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyesockets. Jinki moved to stop him - to pull his hands away from his face and hold them at his sides, if he had to - but the moment the thought entered his mind Taemin had thrown himself at his chest, clinging at the wool of his sweater like a lifeline and burying his face into his shoulder as a wave of fresh tears scalded his eyes.
“Jinki, I can't go back again, I don't want to, I really don't, but I don't know how to stay here.” Taemin was babbling almost without breathing, taking great gulps of air over his own words. Jinki put his arms awkwardly around Taemin's shoulders, rubbing slow, steady circles over the surface of his back as the boy shook. “I just want to stay with you but I can't because I don't know h-how!”
Jinki didn't know what to say. And, really, what could he have said? There were probably not enough words in the world to calm Taemin down, to make him forget the fear that strangled him even now, and kept his body rigid and trembling as he cried. Instead, Jinki held his only friend - the best friend he'd ever had - both of them splayed out on the cold tile floor of the cramped upstairs bathroom, silently rubbing circles across his back and carefully brushing away the sweat-soaked hair that clung to Taemin's forehead as he sobbed endlessly into Jinki's reindeer sweater.
He was only twelve. He didn't know what else to do.
Jinki just prayed it would be enough.