Jiyong doesn’t know what he’s doing.

He’s sitting on a splintered wooden bench, hands stuffed in the pockets of his flimsy hoodie and one sneakered foot atop the other. The streetlight next to him is non-functional, and the closest light provides him only enough to make out the blue-black outlines of everything. Trees, mostly. Still as the night. His breath escapes his nostrils as a curling white cloud.

It must be past 5am.

Another night is slipping away and Jiyong still doesn’t know what he’s doing.

The chill of the night permeates through his skin into his bones but he simply grits his teeth, uncaring. The shadows only become ominous if you think they are ominous. He is comfortable in the dark. He likes the feeling of being shielded and having everything shielded from him, a blanket over his heart, a veil over his eyes.

In the dark, he can pretend it all doesn’t exist. The loneliness like a raw rift in his chest, the pressure compressing him from all around, the feelings that suffocate him until he’s choking on his own sadness. He feels the darkness flow through him, letting it fill up the emptiness inside. It soothes, it caresses, it bathes him.

Somewhere, in a deep recess of his mind that he can’t quite dig out, he knows it’s not true. He knows the darkness is seductive and will reel him in until he never sees the light of day again. But for now, all he can think of is how it fills his lungs like some special energy. He breathes faster, wanting to take it all in, and his heart patters quicker.

He doesn’t notice how the freezing air is piercing the walls of his nostrils, how his face has turned white as snow, how his body is shaking uncontrollably, how his eyes are dry and bloodshot, how his fingers are turning blue. After all, the darkness hides it all. All the unwanted and awful things.

Sometime later, who knows how long?, his eyes slide close and the dark completely engulfs him, like a protective fortress. He wants to smile, but he finds he has no energy, so he tries to mentally smile. It works vaguely. He doesn’t know. What is he doing again?

Like this, the darkness grows, reaching its black tendrils around his feeble heart and slowly, slowly, tightening around it. Jiyong willingly gives his heartbeats away and the pause between each pulse stretches longer.

“Hyung!”

He feels his brain dim, like an impossibly thick fog shrouds his mind. His every muscle is rigid. Moving isn’t worth the effort anyway. Breathing is so laborious. It hurts. He might as well give up.

“Hyung!”

Yes, he is almost there. But almost where? What is going on? The darkness herds him towards its kingdom and yes, Jiyong can see it now. You don’t have to be king, it tells him. You don’t have to be anything.

“Hyung!”

Good, he thinks. From somewhere, a steady thumping noise approaches, deafeningly loud but so distant. It jars his brain a little but that’s okay, he is too far gone to be affected. Nothing will matter soon enough.

“No. No, no! Hyung! Hyung! Jiyong-ah! You can’t!”

The thumping stops but suddenly there’s something against his cheeks. His numb nerves feel nothing for several moments, before his skin flares up. He would scream if he had any breath in him, but he doesn’t. It presses against his flesh, rubbing the heat into him.

“Jiyong-ah, don’t leave! Don’t leave me…”

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