I want to wring his pretty little neck.

            He sits at the foot of my bed with a careless elegance, a mocking smile, an air of anger intertwined with the calm and composed tone in which he speaks.

            I turn and cover my head with one of the pathetically inadequate pillows left at my side, weak and limp and utterly incapable of doing its newfound job of keeping the room quiet.

            Eighteen years of the same, and he has gotten predictable. He gets frustrated when I ignore him. He’s like a child – without attention, he kicks and screams, throwing a tantrum of his own fit to ship with curses and insults so colorfully conjured with a brutal and unfeeling creativity.

            I want to tie him up and see what he looks like when he’s in pain.

            Close your eyes, bury your head. Block it out until the doctors come.

            I saw you looking at him, you freak.

            “W-what?” I sputter. Looking at him? Of course I had been looking at him. Eye contact was certainly nothing out of the ordinary.

            You were staring his legs, weren’t you? ing ert.

            “I-I wasn’t…” My cheeks flush red as I recall the loose-fitting hospital gown that slipped so easily above his knees, the exposure of his delicately carved legs that swung playfully behind his head as he lay on his stomach with his attentive eyes and full lips poised in my direction…

            He has such nice skin. Oh, such nice skin.

            “S-stop it.” I mutter, angry that I have engaged him any further. Eighteen years, and he is unreasonable. Conversation is meaningless because his listening skills are not as keen as mine are, though since mine have been trained with the incessant onslaught of whispers that are impossible to ignore, I am left to wonder if that can be said of anyone’s. But his, his are barely there. His have been dulled because he does not listen – he merely speaks.

            I want to play with him. Can I?

            “No.”

            I want to play with him, just like I did with your teacher.

            “Be quiet.”

            I want to rip him apart. Oh, such nice skin…

            “Choi Minho?”

            I jerk upright and he leaves as quickly as he came, the emergence of the doctor making him leap out of sight.

            Eighteen years, and he is flighty. There are certain things that set him off. The doctors, for one, make him disappear for mere minutes before his return. I doubt he’s afraid of them. Fear is far too human an emotion for him to feel. I think it’s more a contempt, a disdain toward the very people who are trying to get rid of him.

            I cut her off before she gets the chance to ask those two questions, holding my hand out and my palm outstretched toward the sky as I wait for her to supply me with what I need.

            Eighteen years of anger, of depression, of things that are beyond my control.  

            Eighteen years, and I am tired.

            Last night, I dreamt.

            There was the familiar haze that is a setting to most dreams, the kind of fog where your arms and legs only half move like they are submerged in gray soaked water and your breath feels short and shallow in your lungs.

            My surroundings were empty – a blanket of white that, for some reason, is never cause for confusion in the midst of sleep, though such a setting is entirely nonexistent within the confines of reality.

            Immediately upon entry I scanned my feet and my hands, and noted with a feeling of immense satisfaction that they were all there and accounted for. My fingers and toes were arranged accordingly and seemingly to be properly functioning, which is a luxury rarely afforded in such a deep state of sleep.

            There was a slight chill and I looked down in surprise to see that I was still wearing my stark white and thin-as-paper hospital gown. It seems even dreamed I couldn’t escape the current confines that I’ve become used to. Dreams are no longer an escape, but a continuation of the very thing I have come to loathe…

            A noise, a slight shift of atmosphere, and a figure shrouded in that dreamlike haze that makes determining just what feature was what, just how far away they were, just who the ghost-like footsteps that glided along the undetermined floor belonged to, a series of completely impossible tasks.

            “H-hello?” I called out warily, eyes squinting in a hopeless attempt of discerning at least the solid outline of the hidden figure that seemed to be inching ever closer with each passing second.

            The words of the psychiatrist echoed in my mind as I remembered what he told me the last time we met. So I stood, perched and alert, waiting with attentive ears to finally discern what that person had to say.

            I heard a distinct buzzing, and, if I stared closely enough, I saw the movement of lips on a still cloudy face. But no words. No syllables that I could make sense of. No indication of human speech at all – not even a couple stray words I could carefully pick out with clear attention as my translator.

            Nothing but that loud buzzing, like the sound of a thousand flies gathering around a corpse for a scrap of meat…

            “I-I can’t hear you,” I said, nerves heavily apparent in my voice. The psychiatrist told me I had to try to hear what he said, and right then, as I tried again and again and repeatedly failed at doing just that, I started to feel the panic set in. “Please, speak up. I can’t hear you,” I begged.

            But there was nothing.

            Then the figure slipped away, fading to white and falling into the background of white, white and nothing but white, and I woke up.

            “You can take your walk now.”

            The doctor draws my curtains for me, signaling the start of the evening, and gestures toward the door with slender hands and immaculate fingernails.

            I slide out of bed and place my feet into the thin slippers I like to keep next to my nightstand, turning up my bed sheets and propping up my pillows out of mere habit. It’s nice to come back to a made bed, anyway.

            They allow us one walk a day, if we choose to take it. I always lunge at the opportunity, but I can see why others aren’t so quick to take them up on their offer. We aren’t actually allowed to go outside. They only permit us to roam the hallways, where we can be supervised and easily found lest something go wrong. I, however, quite like the change of scenery, even if it is still inside this dull and lifeless place.

            It’s not my room and it’s not the psychiatrist’s office, so it almost feels new.

            Almost.

            But there is one place I love to go more than anywhere in this entire building. (Though my options are, admittedly, quite limited.) It’s a place that never fails to calm me down even when I’m at my worst. A place that reminds me of what I had, and what I could maybe regain.

            A left turn out from my room, twenty-five steps down the hallway – or twenty, if I take long strides – a quick right around the corner that stands at a not quite right angle to the hallway I’ve just come from, another quick left, a short sidestep around the doctor that always rounds the corner just the bit too quickly, and there it is.

            Maybe to the average person, it’s nothing special. No, actually, it definitely isn’t anything special. At least not to the eyes that see such things everyday. It’s just a simple balcony. Really, that’s it. It’s not terribly high up, the view isn’t all that interesting, and there are large metal bars from top to bottom to ensure that no one ‘accidentally’ falls off, bars that seem more similar to a prison than I would like.

            To the average person, it’s just a rusty old balcony and nothing more.

            But to me, it’s beautiful.

            The air always feels so fresh, even on the most humid and strikingly hot of days. Even in the winter, when I can only spend but a few minutes out there before my legs and arms shake and cry to return inside away from the deathly cold, the black earth and leafless trees sing nothing but perfection to my red tinged ears.

            And when I’m just convinced that there wasn’t a life before this, when the remnants of memory are slipping and cracking and crumbling into dust until I’m nearly sure that they never even existed in the first place, it reminds me that there’s more out there.

            As I stare out toward the trees that are greener than I remember, taller than I remember, and certainly more vibrant than I remember, I can recall the life I once had. And with a squint of the mind and the stretch of the imagination, I birth a voice of hope that whispers, hey, maybe you could leave one day.

            Maybe you can walk out right into the scenery you’ve admired from afar for god knows how many months. Hell, maybe you can climb one of those vibrant trees that you love and sit atop and watch the sky, if the weather’s good enough.

            Maybe you can escape. Maybe you can get the hell out of here. Go back to your family and live a normal life. Why not? What’s stopping you?

            And then I breathe in that fresh and clear air, scented with the leaves and flowers that scatter the earth below, shift my weight from foot to foot the rough cement beneath me, tilt my head side to side with a carelessness that may or may not be my own, and I whisper right back at it.

            ‘Maybe.’

            But today there is someone else perched in my usual position, their hands gripped loosely around the rusty iron bars and their feet flat and bare on the surface below. Today there is someone else standing there with relaxed shoulders and pointed knees, hair blowing in the wind with the most entrancing and hypnotic pattern, like the waves of an ocean I can only recall in my deepest memories.  

            For a moment I want to turn and run away, and I’m not quite sure why. My feet are just itching to turn around, to scamper down the hallways and retreat back to the room I’ve only just left. But before I’m able to, he glances over his shoulder at me, eyes lighting up as soon as they meet mine. I can’t help but feel slightly embarrassed – there’s no doubt in my mind that my eyes are nothing compared to the brilliance that exuded from his own, and it’s my own shame, or perhaps, my own awe at his perfectly sculpted face that makes me avert my eyes to the cold floor beneath me.

            “Minho!” He exclaims, and my heart jumps like a hiccup in my chest. Not only because he has remembered my name, but also because of the sheer joy in which it had sprung forth from his lips. I’m not used to people being excited by my presence quite like he is, and it surprises me. 

            It would be a lie if I said I didn’t remember his name, because, in truth, I had been turning it over in my head every moment since the doctor had harshly reprimanded him for running off to my room, playfully whispering it with nothing but an empty room as an audience.

            But it certainly couldn’t hurt to pretend.

            “Taemin, right?” I ask tentatively, taking short and hesitant steps until my arms are wrapped around the metal bars before me and my shoulders are just inches away from his own. He nods, his shoulder length hair shifting over his shoulders as he does. 

            “I didn’t realize people other than me came out here,” he says with a smile, leaning backwards as his dainty, almost feminine hands keep him up with their firm grip on the iron fencing.

            “I come nearly every day,” I respond, a bit surprised that I’ve never seen him there before. In all my times of coming out to this same place, I’ve always been greeted with nothing but a vacant spot, an empty place that welcomes me to stand and muse to my heart’s content.

            “Oh, I used to come here all the time,” he said, swaying side to side with the manner of a child. “But I got in a bit of trouble, and they made me stay in my room for a few weeks.”

            I want to inquire just what he had done to deserve such a sentencing, but I’m scared to be intrusive. It’s just difficult to believe that such a delicate boy could have possibly done something worth that sort of punishment.

            There’s something astounding about the way he stands, knobby knees and small bare feet pointed inward as he grins like he’s exactly where he wants to be. Here, in a place that I’m certain constitutes a prison in my mind, and he smiles with the innocence of something untouched, something unbroken. 

            While my mind is dark and tainted with the grip of a torment I can’t escape, he simply glows.

            “But soon, I’m not going to be here anymore,” he adds quickly, his mouth stretched to its widest as he simply beams out toward the landscape before the both of us. 

            “What do you mean?” I ask quietly.

            He points a single finger downward through the iron bars and turns to face me. “I’m going to the second floor,” he declares proudly, eyes pointed with a fiery determination that does nothing but leave me breathless with envy, with admiration, with something I can’t quite place…

            “Second floor?” I ask again. Taemin stares at me like I’ve asked him the silliest question in the world, a hint of confusion at my ignorance in his eyes. 

            “You don’t know?” He says in surprise, pursing his lips together in a way that makes my fingers tremble from the sheer innocence as I shake my head side to side. “Well,” he says, turning back to face the trees directly in front of us and gesturing below, “we’re obviously not on the ground, are we?”

            I followed the path of his hand and looked at the distant earth beneath us. Of course I had noticed that we weren’t on the ground – it would take a fool to have not realized it. I had just never quite considered what it was we were on top of.

            He turns back to face me, white teeth gleaming in the dull sunset that lay behind him. “This building has four floors, you know. The fourth… the ones up there are the lost causes,” he says with a shudder, eyes looking slightly glazed, as if scared just at the thought. “The one’s there will never leave. Shock therapy and everything, I think.”

            I nod along, only half listening, half entranced by the mystic sparkle in his eyes that seems to have a life separate his own. They’re dark, maybe the same color as mine, but they don’t have the dullness that mine do. They have a brilliance to them despite their black shade, a brilliance mine could never hope to match.

            “You and me? We’re on the third floor. It’s mostly adults here. That’s why I was so surprised to meet someone my age,” he continues, “But the second floor… the second floor is where you go when you get better. Well, not completely better, but…”

            I can feel my eyes widen suddenly. I had never even considered the possibility of moving out of here, whether it be in the same building or not. My mind had been stuck in the present, the routine so engrained upon me that the idea had never sprung up, not even for a moment.

            Something different.

            Something new.

            I tighten my grip. “S-so… the second floor. How do you get moved there?” I ask, fingers feeling a bit clammy against the cold metal.

            Taemin smiles, that smile I find myself so absorbed by each time I see a mere fraction of it on his lips. “Good behavior,” he says, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind his ears with a confidence that drips with every motion. He suddenly lifts my hand, grabbing a finger and pointing it directly at his face. “So, get a good look at me!” He laughs. “Because I won’t be here long! I’m getting out of here! I'm going right to the second floor!”

            I give him a smile, my fingers trembling from the boy’s gentle touch and the sheer smoothness of his skin sending shivers down my spine.

            “Oh!” He exclaims suddenly, dropping my hand as quickly has he lifted it. “My time’s up. I have to go now. I don’t want to get in trouble again.” He turns around and waves over his shoulder, laughing a childish goodbye as I remain with my feet cemented to the ground, my mind so frozen I can manage nothing more than a wiggle of fingertips as a mindless goodbye.

            His bare feet hit the tiles as he runs down the hallway, his smooth legs glowing in the lamplight above and illuminating that perfect skin of his that seemed to draw my every attention.  

            And I want to call out to him, to say something to the boy who seems an impossible beauty among the hordes of the insignificant that cloud my every thought, my every movement, my every breath.

            Arms outstretched and hands yearning for that simple touch that had shaken me so fiercely not moments ago, I want to say something to him.

            But the brilliance of his eyes and the glow of his smile have left me without words. 

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A/N - omfg it's been weeks...

Sorry all! I've been busy with school and sports and other various things. And I meant to update yesterday, but I got really ing high and fell asleep OTL I actually tried to write while I was high and uhh... this happened... 

I'm sorry... I'm unreliable :/

Anyway! This fic will hopefully update more often. I'm not quite sure about the quality of chapter. I wrote it in bits in pieces here and there when I had time, so...

I dunno.

My twitter and tumblr are here if anyone wants to say hi. 

Anyway, hope you like!

-Gelisi