~chapter thirty-two~
mourning
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I want you here
Because I can't believe what I found

“It’s my sister’s death anniversary in a few days,” Kai says suddenly. Mari frowns, a painful pang of sadness spreading through her heart. She feels useless and she knows that no matter what she’s gonna tell him now won’t be enough to make him feel better. After all these years nothing makes her mom’s death better. No matter how much time passes, nothing and no one can fill that awfully deep hole she’s left in Mari’s heart.

The worst thing about anniversaries is that—during the whole year you don’t think about it that much. You are sad and there are moments of sudden realization, that person is dead, that person is gone and I won’t see them again. But it usually ends quickly. Anniversaries, on the other side, are always the hardest because you wake up and there’s pain and grief everywhere and you know that you won’t get rid of it for the whole day. There’s no running back from it once it comes. You’ve been strong for the whole year, you’ve been keeping your sadness deep inside, and on the death anniversary all these emotion feel consent to just get out.

She doesn’t ask about anything, she also doesn’t say a word. She wordlessly hands him a chocolate bar that she’s been munching on for the last few minutes while watching Fight Club again. Kai glanced at it, then at her, his eyes weird and empty, and finally took it.

Mari has never seen anyone eat with equal possessiveness and anger.

~*~

Mari was queasy. She knew that no one is after her anymore, and yet, when she was walking through the city a few days later looking for a new apartment, she kept on feeling as if someone is following her around.

So she buys herself a baseball bat.

~*~

Kai tries to li the candle on his sister’s grave. It doesn’t want to burn, though, and the fire his finger. Kai doesn’t even realize until his mother slaps his hand and the match falls out from between his fingers.

Kai looks at the match that’s landed on the grass and bites his lip. He lights up another match and this time the candlewick catches the spark. He hands his mother the candle, their fingers brushing together, and only then he feels how much he’s burn his fingers. He stops himself from hissing.

They spend two hours in front of the grave, sitting on a bench, completely motionless. His mom moves just once, when she needs to wipe the tears out from her cheeks, and that’s all. Their family members come to light up the candles too and they all exchange greetings and silent words of comfort. Kai’s aunt hugs him and his younger cousins attach themselves to his legs and tell him jokes until Kai finally crooks a sad smile at them. When everyone has paid their respects, Kai sits down again, his mom by his side, and they spend another hour there, still without a word.

They don’t speak until it gets dark and cold.

“She doesn’t blame you,” his mother whispered, squeezing his shoulder once before leaving the cemetery.

Taemin comes half an hour later, flowers under his arm and two coffees in his hand. Kai feels incredibly grateful.

“You didn’t have to come,” he says. Taemin had driven all the way back to their family town.

“I wanted to,” Taemin answered, smiling softly. He handed him the coffee. Then he turned towards the grave. “Hi, Choo Hee,” he said with a wider smile. He lighted up another candle and put a bouquet of pink roses by her photo. “How you doing?”

Kai was flooded with the sudden fondness towards his friend and couldn’t believe how lucky he got that he met him. Taemin sat beside him, taking his coffee, and sipped on it hungrily.

“It’s almost night,” Kai noted, pointing at the fluid. Taemin shrugged.

“You never sleep on this day,” he said. “We might as well stay up together.”

Kai found himself smiling and he leaned towards Taemin, grief sipping through his whole body. His friend embraced him quickly and rubbed his shoulder reassuringly for a few minutes.

“We need to get back,” he said then. “It’s getting cold. I’ll wait in the car, yeah?”

Kai nodded. When Taemin left him, Kai told Choo Hee how much he misses her, how much he loves her, and how incredibly sorry he is.

~*~

Counter to what Taemin said, the older boy falls asleep ten minutes after coming back home. Suho waited until they got back, but he looked tired and was already wearing pajamas. He pulled Kai into a quick, but warm hug, told him that he’s sorry and went to sleep.

Taemin sat on the couch and his head immediately lolled onto the side.

Kai’s sadness and nervousness made him completely unable to move. He sat by the table, didn’t even take his jacket off; his bones were hurting and he was cold, and he couldn’t move because every nerve in his body was screaming and throbbing painfully.

Then, for the first time on this day, tears rolled down his cheeks and he leaned on his hands, rubbing them onto his wet eyes, and he couldn’t stop a sob from coming from between his lips.

He needs to get out.

He stands up, trying hard not to wake Taemin up, and is outside in the next minute. His tears are hot on his cheeks and his throat hurts as if someone is sticking rocks inside it; he can’t swallow properly and he clenches his jaw so hard it hurts.

Everything hurts.

~*~

It’s around two am and Mari is settling into sleep when someone climbs in through her window.  She turns to make sure it’s Kai because she still has that bat beneath her bed. But it is him.

Kai is staring at her.

Even in the dim light coming in from outside Mari can tell that Kai is broken.  There is also something about the way he’s holding himself and the uncertain edge to his expression, like he is a second away from deciding this is a terrible idea and he should flee.

Mari watches him back, her heart beating rapidly in her chest. Part of it ache at how badly Kai must need her company to do this, the vulnerability and uncertainty on Kai’s face actually causes Mari pain as she stares at Kai, wishing she could just stand up and envelope him in her arms.  Kai needs her, and Mari couldn’t ever turn away, not from Kai.

She simply pulls aside the sheets on Kai’s side of the bed, subtly watching what Kai would do from beneath the crook of her arm. Kai looks like he is seriously considering bolting back up the fire escape.  She waits for him to decide what he is going to do, head racing with the implications of what was happening.  She had so many questions for Kai, questions she couldn’t ask just yet.

She wanted to know how bad Kai’s loneliness and grief were to chase him into Mari’s bed.  She wanted to know if it was grief or if Kai was using that as a convenient excuse.  She wanted to make sure that Kai was coming to her, specifically, and not just any company.

Mari could probably answer all those questions based on what she knew about Kai and what she knew about grief herself, and it all formed into a picture that had Mari in the center of it, in a role she hadn’t entirely expected Kai to see her in.

She’s not surprised when Kai slides into bed next to her, the bed settling beneath his weight.

Not really, not after he consciously made the effort to leave his own house, drive or walk in the middle of the night and climb into Mari’s apartment. 

That decision couldn’t have been easy for Kai to make, and he must have been weighing the urge against rational thought for the past three hours, since he had sent the text bidding Mari goodnight.

That Kai had made the decision to come here anyway meant so much on so many levels that Mari was having trouble separating all the strands of significance.  Her brain couldn’t turn off trying to make sense of everything as she turned towards Kai, fitting herself along Kai’s side in what she told himself was a pre-emptive strike against becoming a cling monster.

Mari wasn’t entirely sure what it meant to Kai, but she knew what it meant to her that Kai has come to her.

It meant everything.

Because Mari was definitely lost to whatever this was, and there was no coming back from that.

Her only intent in that moment had been to not put Kai in a situation where he woke up with Mari spooning him.  Mari had a habit of spooning with her entire body; with the same kind of enthusiasm she did everything, which loosely translated to clinging like a barnacle. She usually woke up squeezing a bunch of pillows.

But she also wanted to comfort him. Make sure he feels safe.

Her heart rate slowly slowed down and she was getting tired. She was looking at Kai’s wide back and messy hair and watched him breathe steadily. The sound of him breathing was like a lullaby and she quickly found herself asleep.

~*~

Kai staggered out of the bedroom, hair in complete disarray.  He fell into the closest chair Mari had.

“You really aren’t a morning person, are you?” Mari asked to cover the silence.

Kai made a vague gesture which could either be translated to ‘no I’m not’ or ‘give me my breakfast.’

It wasn’t until Kai left to take a shower and change, and then left her apartment, smiling at her quickly, that Mari had time to reflect on what was happening.

She wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. A part of her thought she should be freaking out a little, because when you woke up next to someone and then cooked them breakfast, there were certain unspoken relationship cues that were implicitly stated through the actions.

Certain cues like: you’re in a relationship.

~*~

“Do you know anything about Kai’s previous relationships?” Mari asks one day at the bar. Kibum’s reaction is quite significant – the older boy flails around with champagne in his hand, almost dropping it, and sighing heavily when he manages to catch it mid-air. Only then he nudges a glass with his elbow and is falls onto the floor and shatters into tiny pieces.

They both jump at the sound, but Key also yelps at it with surprise.

He decided to glare at Mari until she rolled her eyes and went to take a broom from the back. She came back pouting, but cleaned the mess. When she was done she looked at Kibum pointedly; the boy was wary.

“Why are you asking?” He asked.

“Because I’m curious,” Mari stated, careful not so show any hints. But Kibum was perceptive enough and he had made a few allusions about her and Kai a few times already, so she knew it wasn’t completely necessary. “And basing on your reaction, you know, and you’re scared to tell me.”

“Not scared,” Key said. “I’m not sure if I should be the one telling you.”

“Why? Was it so serious?”

A customer came and she had to make him a drink before turning to Key again. The boy huffed out a breath.

“It changed him,” Kibum said. “This and whatever weird has happened in his past. I suppose only Taemin knows about it, so I won’t be any help about that.”

Mari didn’t tell him that she knew too. She knew about Kai’s father, sister, about the violence and pressure he had to go through, about grief and guilt haunting him for his whole life and about his nightmares and insomnia. She knew it all and found herself shocked that she was the only person beside Taemin.

“She was the first person to see the real him,” Kibum said. “He loved her deeply because she didn’t care about his problems or past. She was the one who convinced him to come here, to drop med school and oppose to his father. I don’t know why he hated his father that much, but it did look like he was happy for the first time in his life.”

Another two customers came, one of them completely wasted; Mari eyed him judgmentally and gave him a non-alcoholic drink. Music was echoing through the bar, making the floor shiver, and colorful lights around them made her a bit dizzy all of a sudden.

“Then what?” She asked when her customers were done. Kibum was violently shaking something in a silver vessel, his own male customer obviously checking him out. Key couldn’t be more uninterested.

“Then it turned out she never loved him and she used him as a tool to move here. She was scared of being alone, so when she figured out how much he loves her, she decided to make a puppy out of him. She was coming back and leaving him again years after that and every time she’d say something different, that she loved him but was too scared of commitment, that she didn’t love him but she wanted to learn to love him, all that cheesy, crazy stuff. Stupid .”

He handed the man a drink and he wriggled his brows at him. Key winked at him and swaggered away from him.

“Jonghyun wouldn’t be pleased,” you told him and Kibum snorted.

“Please. He fell in love with these hips,” he says, patting his hip. “And he knows that I’m joking anyway. I need to get tips from someone, right?”

The man does leave a 20$ tip.

~*~

When Jinki found out about Mari finally being free from the debt, the first thing he did was to ask her out for dinner. He took his wife and kid with him and Mari spend one of the best evenings in her life, eating for five people and laughing at every joke.

When there wasn’t instant fear and nervousness lurking in the back of her head, everything seemed brighter and better.

~*~

Two days later she finds herself a new apartment. Well, not exactly an apartment. She buys herself a loft. It’s huge and practically the walls are covered with windows. It feels fresh and safe and bright. She doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the space anymore. The loft  also has a huge balcony. She buys a grill and a hammock.

Then she goes to pick the furniture with Jinki.

There’s a pair of eyes watching her and when she glances in their direction, the person flees and disappears out of her sight.

“Mari?” Jinki asks. The girl lets out a stuttering breath.

It’s okay, she thinks. Probably some creeper. You’re safe.

She focuses on the pillow patterns again.

~*~

Kai helps her choose the bed and bookshelves, promising that she’ll help her fill them up with the greatest books. In the past she had no time to read anything. Now she had all the time in the world.

~*~

She spends most of the days in the warehouse, painting. Kai visits her when he can, but he’s working hard because suddenly everyone wants him to be their model.

Mari isn’t surprised and she not-so-discreetly checks him out when he tells her that. Kai’s cheeks flush, but Mari, idly, doesn’t feel embarrassed at all. She smirks at him instead.

She paints him again that day, this time deciding to make a full-body painting. She uses watercolors again because she feels the best using them and when she’s done it’s night already. Music plays softly in the back, candles and warm lights illuminate the place, and Kai is falling asleep on the couch, propped on his shoulder.

Mari laughs at him when his head lolls off his fist and hits the couch. He startles and blinks at her owlishly.

She feels safe and warm again.

~*~

She submits her papers to an arts academy a few days later. She goes with Kai again and they tell her to bring some of her works for them to see. They don’t look very pleased with them and Mari freaks out, but then the dean tells her they’re gonna contact her because there might be problems with her papers (she barely finished high school and she needs to bring them a better ID). Mari frowns at that.

She burns her fake ID that night and stares at the ashes for a long time before standing up and going to take a shower.

~*~

Mari exits the bar when it's dark already and quickly makes her way towards her house when her phone buzzes in her pocket. She picks it up without looking at the dialer, cars passing by quickly, illuminating lights at her. The street is all shiny because it's been raining and the air is chill but pleasant. 

"Yes?" She asks to her phone. She turns left, away from the street, finds herself between the blocks.

"You up to a movie night? Taemin rented the newest Thor,” Kai says on the other line.“We can buy pizza on our way. I was going to order it anyway.”

“Yeah, that would be great,” Mari says, glancing at her wrist watch.

“Alright. Where are you? I'll pick you up."

“I will be home in a few minutes," Mari says. "I'm coming back from work.

"Okay, I'll be there in ten," Kai says, yawning. "Bye!"

"Bye," she chuckles and disconnects.

She barely takes four steps when the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Then something hits the back of her head hard and she falls onto the ground.

Incredibly short chapter but I hope you don't mind /sigh

I have a phase for lofts bc gosh just type 'loft' in google and just LOOK 

I want to live in a loft one day lol

Mari's looks somewhat like this: x because she deserves something nice in her life at last right?

Gosh guys this fic is really coming to an end, it's so hard for me to comprehend otl. I just realized that it took me almost two years to write, I'm awful oh my god. Thanks for being patient and for being awesome. And hello to all new subscribers <3