something

Daehyun/Youngjae, Daehyun POV

Sometimes, I sit out here and watch as the cars pass by. Inside this cityscape where the world moves in a direction of unison, I sit out here at the bus-stop as an anomaly while people come and disappear. The tungsten lights drip into the puddles from this evening's rain, the taste of petrichor on my lips. I gaze out as the neon burns into the asphalt and the people walk.

Click, clack. I make out the shoes along the pavement, those that pelt over the drain covers and into the millimetres of rainfall left behind. It is cold. High heels breeze past along with a pair of southern summer shoes, mother and son walking with the everyday conversations of home trailing them. Another pair presses against the cement with a devastatingly slow pace, possible reluctance or leisure trapped in his feet. Those are dress shoes, I think to myself as the light flickers over me. Another of the waiting sits by my side with an unlit cigarette between his fingers. He kicks his habit by boarding the bus that comes first.

In these moments where sepia drizzles over my sight and I can only think of how breathless I am, I think of you. You that I met on another rainy day like this, the aftertaste of a sadness hard to pin down into words. You wore no tears that day but you walked with heavy steps, eyes glazed with the summers left behind decades ago. Along your face were smile lines that told you were in your late twenties.

You sat at the bus-stop as well, waiting in the far corner where it was dim. You slouched over your knees and stared out at the traffic flickering past, numbers after numbers, faces after faces. I counted the number of buses you missed until you sighed and turned to me with those large eyes I never learnt to forget.

Your lips parted and I gazed back. Perhaps you saw my silhouette as your reflection, thus you fluttered your long, long lashes and spoke first. A simple greeting, another bus went by with the bright white lights jarring against all the copper lamp posts. I mapped out your face to keep in my diary. Somehow, as I stared at you, blinking green and seething red against your pale cheeks, I thought the moment between us was a prologue to something. What, I wasn't sure, but it was difficult for me to explain how taken in I was by your dark eye circles and the fatigue bruising in your irises.

You placed your small hands on your lap, lips plump and face like a heart. My first inhale was a crescendo even amidst the rushing traffic. I asked if you were heading home. You said you weren't. Then, you asked me back my question.

I told you I was finding mine. You snorted, probably writing me off as an oddity then. The wind broke against the buildings opposite us and the waning crowds, eleven o'clock seeping in as the quarrel between dawn and dusk was soon to start.

You commented that it was quite the fuitle find if I sat instead of searched. I smiled at you and came a little closer so we could breathe carbon monoxide together. You reeked of a dainty Cosmopolitan rather than hard liquor, perhaps an edge of a Manhattan to your tongue. I, perfectly sober, was yet the strange one to you.

I said I was waiting. You asked what I was waiting for. I said nothing in particular. You asked me how I would know if something were to come eventually. I turned to you and remarked, well, you've come, haven't you?

You laughed, saying you were too pretty to be picked up at a dingy bus-stop where the lights couldn't stay on. We wallowed in a comfortable silence while the cars flittered past and the faces continued changing. One, two, three. I told you that it was in waiting for nothing that we could truly step back and be outside of the world. Otherwise, we lived stuck in the gears, running for the next train home and the one to work in the morning.

You said you liked the idea. Just waiting for nothing in particular, to remove yourself from all that's happening and be a part of nothing. A part of nothing, I repeated like a question. I asked if you meant it temporarily. You shook your head.

You exhaled again, so weighty like tonnes gritted through your windpipes and refused to let you go. I asked why you were sad. You said it was because you were always tired. I asked why you were tired. You said it was because you were always sad.

Then wait with me, I suggested and put a hand over your wrist. You jerked and I memorised the scars along your skin. One, two, three. I didn't ask how deep even though I wondered.

You said, Okay. So we waited there for centuries through the minutes, thinking about strangers and how my hand lingered on your scars. I wondered when. I wondered why. I wondered whom you did this for--someone else or yourself. The seasons bled through our eyes as the cars simmered away into the cooling night. To watch people head home with a quickness in their footsteps made you envious, I supposed, as your fingers would curl though you continued watching.

The only ones that notice those who don't board the buses are those who do not board themselves, you mentioned. I agreed, but said that sooner or later, if they stayed long enough, people would realise we were waiting for something that would not come. You asked how would they tell. I said they just could--from our posture, our tired eyes, how none of the buses make us turn our eyes.

Later, we walked to your home in a tranquil silence. Tap, tap, tap. Our canvas shoes brushed against the floor, soft in our own solitudes. I asked if you'd been to a place like this--where you waited for nothing. You said yes, and it was a very sorrowful moment you'd rather not talk about. And as you lifted your head, you sighed again, hand clasped over your wrists to protect your flesh from the gales. Your exhales were a little lighter than before, and you thanked me for teaching you how to wait.

As we reached your door, the apartment grey and bleeding with peeling paint, you asked me for an answer as to what to do when you waited for nothing. I said to go home and make a routine out of it. Take the winter days, where it seems so lonely, to sit where we were and wait for nothing in particular, so when something comes along, it becomes a little surprise for the day. And if there is nothing, it will not matter, for that is what you sought for.

You laughed at me and stared, stared like you were trying to figure out how strange a man I was. Then, you said you would. You would wait for nothing in particular. And you hoped you were a good enough surprise for me today.

As I left, I learnt what it truly meant to wait. Because I, who lost the sentimentality of waiting, sat at the bus-stop to wait for nothing. And then there was you, a something, a someone without a name that kept me awake for the days to come. I worried, I anticipated, I was lost. In the hours we spent waiting for nothing, I had already built a cliched home in the palm of your hands.

So here I am today, waiting for nothing (something). Perhaps this winter day out of the countless others that have gone by, you will plod through the snow with a scarf tight around your neck. The winter may be cheeky enough to scrawl on a blush for you while you wait for nothing.

As the buses pass and I count the passengers that got up and left, I hear the footsteps of a man who waits for nothing in particular. Slow, leisurely, perhaps a little sad. And I turn to see you with eyes a little less tired than before, a nothing who I spent my days waiting for even though I said not to.