His skin was so warm. It heated everything it touched, Kibum’s left cheek and fingertips falling prey to it this time. Lips graced with a grateful and peaceful smile, eyes filled with wonder from the sight before him, Kibum lied unmoving, the same way he has for the past few minutes.  The rise and fall of the other’s chest induced a similar pattern of waves on his stomach, waves that Kibum’s face was riding leisurely. His fingers traced his own name onto the other’s skin mindlessly, his love’s name following after.

Minho stirred in his sleep, waking up from his dreamland to a reality where Kibum was lying with his face on his stomach in the middle of the night when he was supposed to be in his own ward. He did not seem one bit surprised about the other’s presence, a smile creeping up onto his face. The hand attached to the IV rose from his side and came to rest on Kibum’s playful fingers.

Couldn’t sleep?

That was Minho’s wordless question to him as he stopped Kibum’s fingers and pulled the hand up to kiss each knuckle. Kibum shook his head, his left ear causing friction against the other’s bare stomach.

Didn’t want to.

Minho chuckled, his teeth grazing the knuckle of Kibum’s forefinger on purpose. Kibum pouted at that, uncurling his forefinger to poke at Minho’s nose repeatedly until Minho was scrunching his nose up in displeasure.

Stop it.

Minho flicked his forehead gently. Kibum frowned.

Don’t want to.

Kibum turned his face just a little to bare his teeth and dig into the taut skin of Minho’s abs. The bite was nowhere near gentle and it drew a slight jolt from Minho’s body in what was probably a mix of pain and surprise.

Bully!

Kibum smiled at Minho’s profound frown, perhaps finding it a little too amusing for his own good. Minho took revenge immediately, twisting Kibum’s right earlobe, chastising him. Kibum raised his head to follow the hand in an effort to reduce the pain. His bandaged hand shifted a little on the bed and the new position sent a slight tinge of pain up his arm.

“Ouch!” Kibum jumped, calling out the first real word of their exchange tonight. Minho’s expression switched to one of concern immediately, his head lifting from the pillow to see Kibum better. Worry clouded the jet black orbs, so full of love as they looked at him in search of any signs of a reason Minho would have to spring off his bed and take Kibum in his arms protectively.

Kibum smiled, ignoring the odd sensation in his left hand to lean down and press a doting kiss to the very spot on Minho’s skin that had his teeth mark, resting his cheek upon it after.

I’m fine.

Minho relaxed only then, when he was assured that Kibum was truly alright and when he had a very unwillingly tired Kibum snuggling against his abdomen. Minho caressed his ear, his thumb dipping in and out of the folds soothingly.

You should sleep.

Kibum nodded to Minho’s silent order, having no energy to fight sleep anymore although he wanted to savor each moment he had by watching the other. The repetitive and gentle massaging on his scalp drove Kibum closer and closer to unconsciousness.

“I love you.”

Kibum blinked his eyes open from sliding shut. Pressing two fingers to his own lips, Kibum then lifted that hand up to touch Minho’s drier ones. Minho pouted his lips out to return the indirect kiss, smiling contentedly as he watched Kibum bring the fingers back to his own lips. It was that very smile that remained engraved to the back of his eyelids so that he could still see it even when his eyes closed.

I love you too.

Kibum stood tensely behind the cover that the curtain provided him with, all the while glancing not so sneakily at the two men inside the walls of curtains. He wanted nothing more than to go inside and take his place beside Minho, glaring at the third man there to prove that there is nothing that he could do to hurt Minho anymore. Kibum would never let him.

Alas, he couldn’t do just that right now. All he could do was watch anxiously as the two men conversed in fluent English (Kibum wishes now that Minho would teach him the language so that he was not so left out of the loop) while standing out of their way, giving them the privacy Minho asked for just moments earlier when the white man had barged into the ward so unexpectedly, demanding to want to talk to Minho.

Minho looked absolutely enthralled by what the other was saying, his eyes wide open and his mouth opening and closing without releasing any sounds. Kibum couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing, that Minho seemed to be so surprised by whatever he was hearing.

The General didn’t seem to be spouting angry insults like he usually did though. He spoke sternly, his back straight as a ruler while he looked down at Minho with a frown on his face. But it was not an angry frown. It was more a confused one, one that came from him probably feeling a little uncomfortable.

Kibum waited and waited for their conversation to end, not even bothering to hide the fact that he was indeed still there behind the curtain, listening to them. The other two knew this too and still they carried on with their conversation that was filled with one too many drawn out silences. It felt like Kibum has been rooted to his place for ages before the General made a move to leave. Just before he was about to leave, he did something that shocked Kibum immensely.

He reached a hand out unsurely to pat Minho’s shoulder twice. Minho looked away from the man, not giving any reciprocation to the first ever show of affection by the white man to him. Kibum was still dumbfounded by what he had witnessed when the General walked away from the bed and towards him. The man paused for a while in front of Kibum, giving him a stern onceover once again. He didn’t even say a word before he walked past Kibum and out of the ward.

Kibum faced Minho once again and found the other still staring at the wall to his left. He seemed to be deep in his thoughts and Kibum was desperate to know what was running in his mind.

“Minho…” Kibum called out to him unsurely. Minho turned to him and offered a small smile.

“He said he was not the reason behind what Minwoo did to you and your grandmother…” Minho said, his voice betraying the pain that he was trying to hide. He tried so very hard to maintain eye contact with Kibum, his eyes glazing over with moisture.

“Do you believe him?” Kibum asked. If Minho was going to believe that his uncle is innocent, then so will he. Kibum does not even have a shadow of a doubt that Minho would ever be dishonest with him.

The smile on Minho’s face flickered as if it took an enormous amount of strength just to hold it in a place. Exhaling heavily, Minho finally directed his gaze back to the empty wall beside him before he spoke.

“I want to, Kibum. I really do…” he said in a hoarse whisper. His words were of a man who has lost his trust, lost the reason to believe and wanted nothing more than to find it again. He brought the hand still hooked to the IV up to pretend as though he was rubbing his face when both of them knew that he was only trying to hide the tears falling without control now.

Kibum stood stock still watching his lover break down in front of him. All his life he had only ever wanted to be loved by the single family member he had left and now, maybe there is a chance of him finally having it. Right now, everything boils down to if Minho will ever be able to forgive his uncle for the things he had done to him and Kibum. What if Minho’s uncle’s ignorance and hate for him had gone on for far too long for their relationship to be salvaged now?

“He… he said…-“ Minho managed between sharp intakes of breath, all the while making sure his voice remained level although he was still crying, “-that he loved me…”

Kibum felt the tears collecting in his eyes overflow with that, finally finding their way down his cheeks. He knew that there wasn’t much he could do to comfort Minho. This overwhelmed feeling of his was something that he would have to overcome himself and all Kibum could do was stand by him, letting him know that he was not alone.

After a while, Minho found courage to look back at Kibum through his tears. They looked at each other that way for a long moment that was filled with comfortable silence, enjoying each other’s companionship through this, although it was wordless. But it occurred to Kibum for the thousandth time that words had never been necessary between them.

Kibum managed a smile, wiping his nose with the back of his right hand.

Minho returned the smile more sincerely, telling Kibum that the emotions from earlier had settled down now. He wiped his eyes with the heels of his palms.

Kibum was busy sniffling when he heard Minho chortle and when he looked up, he too started laughing. No one knew how or why the laughter started but they were both laughing together and that was all that mattered.

After all, laughter is the best medicine, isn’t it?

A week later, Kibum was back in familiar territory once again. Home. Doctors deemed him good enough to leave and would get better in time. Kibum supposed that three weeks had really been enough for him to pass the critical stage where his body could have started rejecting the metal plate in his hand and caused life-threatening inflammations. Nothing of that sort had happened and so here he was, sitting opposite a very quiet Jonghyun at the dining table as they ate breakfast alone while the rest of the occupants of the house were already up and out or in Minho’s case, still sleeping.

“Hyung, what are you doing today? Can you come with me back to my house? I want to get the place fixed up so that I can move back in…” Kibum said, hoping to make conversation with the eerily silent man in front of him.

Jonghyun looked up from his bowl of rice, chopsticks pausing halfway to his mouth.

“Are you planning to leave me as well?”

The question hit Kibum hard, right in his heart. Kibum fumbled for the best way to reply without divulging too much into depressing matters, although he thought that talking about Jinki would actually be good, because at least then he would be able to coax some form of an emotion from his best friend besides silent suffering.

“Forget I said anything, Kibum,” Jonghyun said, picking up his only half-eaten breakfast to throw it away and put the bowl for wash in the sink, dismissing the grim topic himself.

“I can’t. I’m going to Osan for a bit before heading to the city. I won’t be back until late night,” Jonghyun said, his back turned to Kibum as he washed his bowl. He would roll his left shoulder every once in a while, as though to ease a kink there, but Kibum knew the real problem. The on and off swelling of the muscle near his left shoulder blade has been bothering him more than he let others see.

“Hyung, has there been any new developments at Osan?” Kibum asked, just as he heard the sound of a car pulling up in front of the house. He dismissed it as it was probably just Jonghyun’s father.

Jonghyun has been going to said village regularly in hopes of hearing news about the discovery of Jinki’s dead body. He should have given up by now. The Japanese burnt down their base camp in contempt of their Admiral’s assassination before the remaining soldiers retreated. If there was an odd chance that Jinki’s body had survived that, then there was a huge chance that he had been buried together with the other dead bodies in the mass burial the villagers there had carried out.

Knowing all of this, Jonghyun still kept returning to the village to inquire about a certain chubby-cheeked, fit and muscular man who had been beaten up to a pitiful condition before he died. Jonghyun hasn’t been able to let the other go so he was still constantly searching for whatever connection he could find to the other, even when he knew his attempts would turn out to be futile. He needed closure and unfortunately, that is exactly the thing that was eluding him now with the uncertainty as to what happened to Jinki’s dead body.

Seeing how much Jonghyun was struggling to answer, Kibum decided to change the subject once again.

“How did the meeting with that company representative go? Are they going to offer you a contract?”

Kibum knew that Jonghyun has been meeting up with representatives of various small agencies lately that helped budding artists to jumpstart their careers. The industry is small and not quite recognized amidst the chaos that is war and occupancy. But it is still there, appreciated by the people who are glad to know that something as beautiful as music is still striving in this cruel world. It’s a choice not many are able to make, taking into consideration that these agencies only want the very best as they did not want to waste their money on someone not good enough.

However, Jonghyun surprised Kibum last week when he told him for the first time that the reason he has gone missing so many times was for this very reason. Why Jonghyun would throw himself into a world full of competition and hardly any reward for all the hard work he would have to put in, especially so soon after the loss he has been fighting through to accept, was a mystery to Kibum.

However, that mystery did have a name written all over it. Jinki.

“I don’t know. That’s why-“ Jonghyun was beginning to answer when he was interrupted by his sister’s shrill voice coming from out front.

“Jonghyun! Kibum! I think you’d like to come out here and see this!” she said, sounding distressed and excited at the same time.

Jonghyun shared the same confused look with Kibum, but the both of them chose to go see what the fuss was about instead of just staring at each other for answers.

Kibum followed Jonghyun out of the front door, not expecting for the elder to stumble back into him the moment he stepped out with the force of something running into him. It took Kibum a second to realize that that something was a person. It took Kibum two more to recognize that the head full of black hair on Jonghyun’s chest was Taemin.

“You’re alive! You’re alive, hyung!” the youngest kept repeating as he pulled back from Jonghyun to look at him in joy, tears falling freely. He cupped Jonghyun’s face in his hands as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Jonghyun seemed to be dazed because he couldn’t so much as return Taemin’s hug.

“Taeminnie!” Kibum called. Taemin’s head snapped in his direction immediately, his eyes growing wider than they already were. He left Jonghyun to come to him, wrapping his arms around Kibum so tightly that he was almost crushing Kibum’s bandaged hand between their chests.

“Minnie, careful..” Kibum reminded the younger, pushing him away a little to show him the injured hand. Taemin looked apologetic, crying harder than before.

“Hyung, I was so worried! Do you know how scared I was that I would lose you all?! Do you know how terrible it felt to be safe all alone when you were all fighting for your lives here?!!” Taemin exclaimed, unable to control his volume as he trembled from crying so hard. Kibum pulled the boy back into a hug, one less tight but loving, all the same. He kissed the top of the boy’s head, holding him close so that he could calm down.

Jonghyun seemed to snap out of his daze then, reaching a hand out to Taemin’s hair as he cried into Kibum’s shoulder. The situation felt very close to heart because of the countless times they had really comforted Taemin this way. Jonghyun met Kibum’s eyes, a mutual understanding passing between them to do all in their power to console the younger of his worries and fears.

“Minho hyung!” Taemin exclaimed suddenly, letting go of Kibum and running past him. Kibum turned around to find the man with a broken leg, standing by the door with his crutches as his support, beaming in joy at the sight of the younger boy.

Taemin crashed into Minho with the same amount of force he has been using on everyone else, surprising Kibum with the amount of strength he showed by holding Minho from falling back when his crutches slipped out from underneath his armpit. Kibum smiled at the heartwarming sight of his lover consoling his friend like he would a baby, the joy he felt in his heart from having the youngest boy back growing with every passing moment.

“Jonghyun, there’s someone else here…” Songdam noona said all of a sudden and immediately, everyone’s attention turned to where she was gesturing.

There, by the car that Taemin probably arrived in stood both Jonghyun and Taemin’s fathers, along with two women, one white haired and the other probably in her late twenties. They looked awfully devastated, eyes void of emotions just like Jonghyun’s has been for the past few weeks. Kibum stared at them for a long time, trying hard to remember where he had seen these people before, if he had ever seen them, that is. They did seem very familiar, like faces Kibum’s brain had remembered from a long time ago but had forgotten over time.

He turned to Jonghyun to see if the other recognized these women and realized that Jonghyun more than just recognized them. He was trembling, rooted to his place as he stared at the two in plain shock.

“Hyung?” Kibum called to him, questioningly.

Jonghyun did not answer him. It was Taemin that answered him instead.

“Kibum hyung, meet Mrs. Lee and her daughter, Jiyoung. Jinki hyung’s mother and sister…”

Taemin fell asleep on Kibum’s lap that evening, so exhausted from his trip back home and all the talking he had done for the past few hours that he didn’t even mind his awkward position on the couch in Jonghyun’s father’s reading room. Kibum tried to pull the younger’s legs from how they were hanging uncomfortably off the other end of the couch but Taemin simply returned to his position a few moments later, rendering Kibum’s efforts useless.

Sounds of whispers from across the room attracted Kibum’s attention. The two boys leaning against the rack of books side-by-side on the floor seemed to have forgotten that there were another two people in the room. One looked so miserable, while the other looked helpless, both looking so lost as to what they should be doing now. Jonghyun had his head hanging low, probably thinking of what he was to about Jinki’s family being present here suddenly, so soon after his demise. He probably thought that it is his personal responsibility to do something, anything, especially after hearing all the stories Taemin and the other two women told them that evening. Minho looked like he didn’t know what to say or to do to make the older feel better, but he really did seem to be trying hard to think of something.

“Hyung... protect them… gone… be strong…” snippets of Minho’s one-sided conversation with Jonghyun carried to him. Whatever he was saying, it seemed to be helping Jonghyun although he still showed no emotions on his face.

Taemin had brought them a lot of stories. A lot of information and news, most quite depressing to hear. Depressing and guilt-inducing. It went without saying that they had learned quite a lot about the man they all thought they had figured out to the last hair. Kibum realized that what he knew was only the tip of the iceberg and even more shockingly, that was just about what Jonghyun knew. Jonghyun, the one that the other had shared his heart and love and everything he ever had with, the one Jinki wanted to protect so selfishly that he wouldn’t care about others, the one Jinki so subtly had loved his entire life. The same Jonghyun that did not even have a clue about the hardships he was enduring the whole time he was there.

“He was a spy hired by the Japanese to watch Yongin in particular because of his history with this place…” Taemin had begun with what he knew, supplying them with a piece of information that they had already guessed.

“He was threatened into it, being told that his family would fall victim if he refused. It didn’t help that Jinki hyung had already gone head-to-head with the Japanese before that in some sort of an undercover British mission. They already had a reason to revenge him before they even found out about where he was from and that he had a small family living in the heart of Hanyang. They wanted someone who the villagers would trust to infiltrate the place, try to win them over and ultimately hand them over to the Japanese easily….”

Kibum looked down when he felt Taemin shift closer to his stomach, curling up into himself on the couch. He carded through the younger boy’s unruly and lengthy hair. This young boy has outdone himself over the past few weeks, coping with the task that was given to him by Jonghyun’s father when he was sent away prior to the war. Kibum would have never guessed that of all the people the village head knew, he would trust the eighteen year old boy with the arduous task of locating the Lee family that has been on the run for a long time now. Together with a colleague of Jonghyun’s father in Hanyang, Taemin had been a huge help in identifying and confirming if the people they found were indeed the people they were looking for.

The story of how Jonghyun’s father had even begun wondering about Jinki’s family was still a mystery to all of them. He wouldn’t tell them just why he had suddenly hired a friend of his in Hanyang who had the expertise in locating people on the run and sent Taemin to him to help him in his job because he was one of the few who would be able to recognize them.

Kibum doesn’t know why Jonghyun’s father had started this search or why he had kept it a secret from them all this time, but all he knew was that he was glad the village head did so. Because otherwise, they wouldn’t have learned the truth about Jinki and his past.

“They killed my husband…” the broken voice of Mrs. Lee rang in his ears over and over again. The sight of her pressing her handkerchief to her eyes with so much pressure, as though to will the tears back in, was still fresh on Kibum’s mind.

“Jinki oppa tried to hide us away. He even resigned from the army to elope with us. We thought that we had gotten away when we finally arrived at the outer skirts of the city on our way to any small village that would provide safety to us,” Jinki’s younger sister by two years had said, wiping her runaway tears when they fell down her cheeks but otherwise seeming calm and collected. She had been clutching on to Songdam noona’s hand as though her life depended on it the whole time she spoke.

“They found us. They… they…-“ she couldn’t seemed to find the words to speak. She had taken to comforting her openly crying mother then instead, of finishing her sentence. While Kibum had been distracted by the exchange between the women, Taemin had leaned in to whisper to both him and Jonghyun the words she could not say.

“They violated her. In front of Jinki hyung…”

That was when Jonghyun had gotten up abruptly from where he was sitting to run to the closest bathroom. Kibum had followed him urgently to find him bent over the toilet, retching and throwing up all his stomach’s content down the white porcelain bowl fitted into the ground. When Kibum had reached out to touch him, he had recoiled in anger, gagging a few more times painfully as nothing left his mouth. After that he had crawled back into the opposite wall, wails muffled into his own hands as his eyes searched Kibum’s for rescue from his pain.

Kibum could do nothing but watch. He wished there was a way he could end his best friend’s suffering, fix him up to be the cheerful, carefree boy he used to be, that was only beginning to see the wonders of true love before it was cruelly snatched away from him. Kibum could do nothing.

The rest of the story was relayed to them by Taemin in Jonghyun’s father’s study, where they were all gathered now, exhausted emotionally and physically too, for some odd reason. The story in which Jinki willingly turned himself in to the Japanese so that they would spare his mother and sister from further tortures. Stories about how Jinki had managed to somehow keep earning money to send to his family so that they could move around and stay low profile, out of the Japanese people’s radar, not that they really had to after the Japanese got what they wanted- Jinki.

To think that the whole time Jinki had been here, he had been carrying this huge burden on his shoulders while keeping that picture-perfect, million watt smile on his face, was hard to grasp. The pain-  oh god, Kibum couldn’t even imagine it- that he must have gone through to have done all that he has right up until his very last breath, there were no words for it. Respect is too small a word for Kibum to use in reference to the ex-military man. So were courageous, heroic and selfless. Those words did no justice to him whatsoever.

Looking across the room, it dawned on Kibum for the first time ever how it must feel like to be in Jonghyun’s place. Things he would never be able to do for the other now that he knew of all his hardships, things he would want to change so that Jinki had a better life ahead for the hell he has already experienced, Jonghyun could never do that now. Because Jinki had chosen to give up that life for Jonghyun, the same life that Jonghyun had wanted to share with him filled with happiest of memories.

He could never have that now.

Kibum wiped away a tear hastily lest it fell onto Taemin’s face and woke him up. Kibum could almost feel Jonghyun’s pain himself and that feeling only multiplied ten folds when he saw Minho looking at him, lovingly from across the room, a knocked out Jonghyun leaning on his shoulder.

That is his life right there, sitting on the floor, holding his best friend close as he comforted Kibum with only a warm gaze across the distance. Kibum could not even imagine giving that up ever.

(A/N) Look who's back after an eternity~~~ Woots!!! Okay I'm really nervous posting this, for very obvious reasons, I think... IT'S THE END!!! Well, almost... The next chapter is the end but still.... OH MY GOD! My first long-fic is ending! :'( I hope I don't disappoint with the ending... This is my baby of ten months, it would be really saddening if it didn't end well.... :(

Guess when the next chapter is coming out?? RIGHT AFTER THIS!!! SCREAM PEOPLE!!! No? no? okay.... 

Anyway, final chapter will be up soon and I will be doing my *coughcough* Thank You speech there.... Until then... <3