(11)

Perhaps it’s fitting, Jiyong thinks sullenly.

When he sees Seunghyun the mentor, offering his freshman counterpart a mint outside the dormitory vestibule, at the same corner with the same brick red walls, he knows.

Jiyong feels the suffocating squeeze in his chest when Seunghyun gives that boy his smile, the one where his eyes crinkle slightly at their ends, crescent dimples peek out from the side of his cheeks and alongside flagrantly upturned lips that practically yells at how Seunghyun’s never been so ing happy to see someone in his life--

He should just keep walking.

Jiyong pairs all the reasons why Seunghyun deserves better with every step he takes home that day.

When he makes it home, he chugs down three drinks straight. He has never been fond of anything remotely alcohol, but that day, he relishes the bitter aftertaste on his tongue. With every drop he takes, his hatred for humanity grows. His anger at himself is momentarily deferred.

He thinks he’s on the verge of being okay again until he opens the kitchen drawer and realises (belatedlt) that the once infinite supply of Campbell Tomato soup had been thoroughly exhausted. Seunghyun hasn't replenished.

Seunghyun never forgets to replenish.

The final line of defence he thought he had bulwarked with alcohol and bitter abhorrence, comes crashing down.

He collapses weakly onto the ground, hands palming his face. There is a rawness it; the hot torrents of grief that course down his cheeks. It mingles with the newfound hollowness in his chest. Intensifies the burning feeling of his own short, heavy breaths against bare and tear-nourished skin. Sharpens the stinging sensation of the moving, prickling air stabbing into dried tear ducts.

(12)

“.” Seunghyun spits, half-giggly, incoherent and reeking of alcohol as he stumbles into Jiyong’s apartment one rainy night, holding a flimsy cardboard box.

“What the hell have you been doing?” Jiyong snaps irritably.

It’s been a week since Seunghyun had contacted him. The audacity he has to show up at his front door at this hour.

“What a surprise. So now you care?”

“What do you mean now I care?!” Jiyong raises his voice, frowns. It doesn’t help that he’s fuelled by thoughts of them; Seunghyun and that courtyard boy.

“I don’t know... let’s see, you haven’t exactly been talking to me at all since your rise to stardom. I--” Seunghyun almost trips over the parapet as he head towards the coffee table. The contents of the box rumble loudly due to their inertia.

“Here are all your ing belongings, you’re welcome.”

“So you’re just going to return my things, without an explanation?”

“Explanation…?” Seunghyun deliberates for a moment too long before expelling a forced, mirthless laugh.

“You and explanation? Oxymoronic don’t you think? Who’s the one who’s been at the receiving end of no explanation since you had that record deal signed?.”

“I’m not the one hanging out with some new ing freshman living two stories above, twenty four seven.”

Seunghyun frowns, expression pained. “What the , Jiyong. Who do you think you are, dictating the things I should and shouldn't do?”

“I’m your ing boyfriend.”

“Oh really? That’s new.” Seunghyun spits with so much malice it takes Jiyong by surprise.

“You drank too--”

"It's the first time I've personally ever heard you say it."

Seunghyun sighs, goes suddenly silent for a while. “You don’t understand me at all.”

And then he’s gone.

(13)

He should apologize, Jiyong thinks.

(14)

It never happens.

Or more like Jiyong never gets the chance.

He doesn’t hear from Seunghyun the next morning.

Or the whole of next week at all.

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter