𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐉𝐎𝐎𝐍𝐆

Hongjoong had an ability. He could see strings of fate. A single red line that tied two soulmates together, usually unseen by the mass human population. Everyone had one. Himself included. He sometimes wondered if it were a blessing or curse that was weighed upon his shoulders. The weight of unwanted fate that sat like a yolk on a calf.

It was frightening. Being bound to someone you didn't even know. It was a luck of the draw of you'd get someone you would learn to love. Hongjoong had steered clear of any of that. He ignored The delicate and weightless red lines that seemed to unimportant. He ignored The delicate little bow that the red string was tied into on his slender pinky. He ignored it. But it was still there as it will always be. A reminder so heavy yet so light on his finger. 

The party was tumultuous as throngs of bodies mingled amongst one another. He Had no means to even want to be at this silly highschool reunion fete. Oh how much he’d rather be at a bar, or perhaps at home. Light swiveled the floor in a reckless tornado of lights. Laughter overpowers the jukebox as conversations swirl in a dirty cloud of smoke, the stagnant stench of cigarettes and alcohol hides within the collaboration of mephitic odours. A sour smell of drink wafts towards him like black plumes bellowing from the windows of a burning house. There’s even a hint of tainting the fragrance of smoke of the room. He Did not want to immerse himself with the revelry as he sat at a table in his cell.I

He Was dangling from the dainty clouds of desperation that were stray glints of blistering tango. The toxic vapour of clouds—the menacing remains of humans—curdle together to painstakingly stitch a blanket of burnt memories. He Had no means to even attempt to remember the horrors that his highschool brought him. Dissolved among the cloud are the corpses of fallen angels, their hands guiding the cloud through the storm that swarms the azure skyline; their long lost memories clumping together to create a sad and memorable painting in the sky.

That was what highschool meant to him. It was a sense of non sequitur, not matching any words that would ever fall off his tongue. The relentless languor of the foolishness of his days weighted upon his shoulders as his former classmen yondered on and on. Hongjoong wanted momentary tranquility. A state he so often described as being among the clouds. The perfunctory man he was, he wanted bliss.

 Bliss; who steals his soul from the abysmal paranoia that protects him from the shrouds of his heart in asphalt. Bliss, to him, was the avoidance of the dripping essence of stalking demons that were preying on you – pursuing you surreptitiously from every angle, analysing you whilst you are oblivious, whilst you are weak; their lingering eyes stealthily slithering all over your body. He wanted to rid his body from agitation of mind or spirit like a sculptor had done with the linguistic Bacchus and his flaws.

His bedraggled, wind thrown soul had no motivation to do anything with his life. I’d much rather be trapped under the celestial on this mistake flawed world drinking shots of tequila until midnight and passing out on the cold cut cobblestones in the spinely alleyways. I’d rather be out on the streets,  when a tepid drizzle begins to veil the building, dancing. I'd rather count down the hours till dawn chases the dusk, dwelling beneath the earth until the darkness submits and falls rapidly beneath its fiery spirit. The meek grey would evaporate into the swarming apricot–icy azure dominated by blazing epiphanies of hazel peach light.

He lifted his hands to study them. Peer at them. Hongjoong has always seen his hand, both back and front. He knew every crease and handfold, every bone that slowly rounded out in it's protruding haste. They were white as ghosts, with the tips of the fingers hazed with a dainty undertone. His fingers were small and white, the I my color was the deep red on his pinky. And the long and thin thread that wound his pinky. Hongjoong his skinny legs off the chair with haste, wanting to release himself of this internal bound. He had some where he needed to go.

-

Liquors of pain affliction as He stared at the ground. He felt absolutely nothing as He read over the engravings of that tablet of slate. He could almost feel the pain that had been bled into the ground as He could almost see those black and grey blotted figures of those demons  who had buckled their legs to the ground and sobbed piteously. They had pressed their grotesque, gnarled faces up to the mulch as if trying to come closer to claim, to salvage their prize. The prize being his mother’s corpse. His eyes were once glossed with those salty oceans, glistening with light the bewitched oceans as wilting bluebells dance in his eyes. They were limp and soft in dismay.  

His cold face did not display any lament as to turn away, his chin tucked into his red, woolen-knit scarf. He recalled the redamancy that he felt towards that vile woman. His body was a temple that was overfull of love and the butterfly glow of eunoia. His eyes glittered with a sort of innocent belief in films of wheat golden. He had believed, really believed that his mother loved me. He really believed that he was a treasure to behold in delicate hands, polished to a gradient shine. But he had let her strike his body, he let her heavy fists fall onto him. He was a vision of blessed light in the floors of Hell. That was, until he became part of Hell.

He walked out of those iron barriers that entrapped the despaired souls, throttled of their lives. He found himself aimlessly wandering, soon finding his friend’s humble abode.

“Jungho, let me in,” He banged on the door, He heard a string of curses from behind the apartment complex’s door before it was whipped open, the hinges squealed in protest.

Choi Jungho was standing there, his torso let out of it’s cloth prison as he stood there shirtless. The only thing that he wore was sweatpants that clung as it hung low on the curve of his hip bones. There was a damp towel that straddled his shoulder, his hair dripping all over the place.  There were headphones that clung to his neck and an Xbox controller in his other hand. He must have been playing games before Hearrived.

Jungho was a free soul. Never really reined in by any boundment of any sort. Possibly the only one that Hongjoong considered a friend.

He pushed his arm, that was propped against the doorway and invited myself in as He sat down on the plush white couch, the fabric scrunched inter by weight but He didn’t care.

“Wanna order takeout? I’ve been craving some Chinese food,” He flipped his phone out and thumbed in the phone number for Panda Express. The two had eaten there so much to the point the number had been tattooed onto his brain.

“What are you doin’ here?” Jungho asked as he clamped the door shut. He threw the controller onto the couch knowing he was hoping for a split second that it would hit him in the face, so he snatched it out of the air and resumed his game. Smacking and popping his gum loudly, his thumbs worked fast and quick with defeating the opponent in the virtual battle. Hongjoong blew a bubble and popped it easily between his teeth.

“Mmh, got kicked out of my apartment for the next few days cause He didn’t pay rent, I’m getting my check this week, but it’s just enough to pay for living expenses, so cover me yeah?” He was focused on the game as he virtually withdrew a sword the length of a car from his pants and proceeded to demolish the other player.

“Isn’t it the second time this month this happened?” Jungho sighed as he took his towel and tried to dry his head with the damp towel.

“Mm, no it's the third. This is just time that I chose to come over, cause y’know, the streets don’t exactly have five-star services,”

Jungho sighed, “Look, I can try to talk to my boss since I’ve been working under his company for the past five years. I can try to get him to hire you,”

“Office work...Seems like too much work,” Hongjoong muttered begrudgingly as he threw the controller back to Jungho, “But I am broke and out of options so give it your best go. Now about the Chinese food...”

“I’ll order some.” Jungho rolled his eyes as he turned around, his pale bronze fingers firmly twitching as he drew a cold glass of water.

The silence was comfortable. It came in open arms, cradling him and whispering sweet nothings into his ears. It’s clutch was dulcet, like honey and he craved more of it. It was the unavoidable nothingness. A quiet that is deafening. Silence was the sweet, sweet void of peace; broken easily by noise which shatters it like glass. Silence is noise, but quite unlike one we are accustomed too. It is the deafening lack of noise that is noise, the loudest of noises one could hear, as they’re no other competing sounds to disperse what is perceived as silence. And though this may be true; silence is also lonely, a constant companion nonetheless of his innermost thoughts.

“ How’d the highschool reunion go?”

And then the fog of silence that mucked his ears was gone.

“To s,” He muttered, “All of them were talking about how they found their soulmates.”

Hongjoong had an ability. He could see strings of fate. A single red line that tied two soulmates together, usually unseen by the mass human population. Everyone had one. Himself included. He sometimes wondered if it were a blessing or curse that was weighed upon his shoulders. The weight of unwanted fate that sat like a yolk on a calf.

It has been 7 years since He got his Soulmate’s mark and no one in his life seemed to love him. It was heart wrenching. The constant cassette tape that plays in his head. The tape that goes: I'm not good enough. Maybe that’s why people don’t love me. It feels as if he has fallen into a cactus, and his heart, punctured a million times over by tiny pins. It stings at first, but now it feels as if they’ve left him numb—not even slightly painful, just numb. He wam not bleeding, but he knew after he slowly started to pull these foreign objects out, one by one, the blood would come gushing out. He didn't want that.

 He didn't want the blood of his heartbreak on the ground for the people to see. He didn't want the humiliation of him not getting his soulmate to play him for the rest of his life. He didn't want to let those black and grey blotted demons lap at his blood like those blood-thirsty beasts they were before skewering his beating, black heart this the edge of that wicked blade. So instead He decided to walk around with pins in his heart.