Title: Wait for the Ashes to Burn
Pairing: implied!Kaisoo (you can't even tell, omg)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst
Length: 758 w
Summary: The sands have run out.

The strings and chains are beginning to snap one by one. The hour hand of the clock is inching closer and closer to midnight, moving at a frightening speed that’s measured by the seconds. The sand drains from the hourglass, each fine white grain dyed black as it passes through the gate separating hope and despair.

The curtains are drawn, and then pulled back, but no sunlight shines through the window. Where is the sun? Where are the moons and the stars that had so often sang him lullabies and tucked him into bed?

Ah, they are gone too, aren’t they?
 

It’s only a matter of time until the black sky is gone too. But when even that fades away, he’d be gone already. And maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have to witness something else leaving him.

Broken masks that had once been woven and glued together by lies lay broken and shattered on the patterned, burgundy carpet, stained with wine and tears and possibly something else synonymous to pain. A lone candle sits, with hot wax still drying and mingling with the ashes of a letter as it drips onto the carpet.

It hurts, but it doesn’t hurt too much. The pain has numbed since long ago, and it’s more of a dull, weary pound, rather than a sharp, tingling stab. He isn’t sure which one is better. He never did feel the pain in the first place.

Or did he?

Cold wind from the night blows through the window as he wrenches it open. They seem to be whispering for him to let go and leave. Or maybe they’re telling him that he needed to stay, because he had a place in life?

No, they’re not. Those lies have long become transparent, almost like a shaped piece of glass wearing the costume of a diamond. So beautiful, so tempting, but never, ever the real thing.

That was his life.
 

Jongin lives a life of sweet, sugary words that paint an ugly picture of lies and insults thrown behind his back when they think he’s not looking. It is a life with acknowledgement from every single person he meets, but at the same time, from no one, not even himself. Because really, can false words be taken to heart?

If they told you black was white, and white was black, would you believe them?

He couldn’t, because he knew black was black, and white was white, and no matter how much he wanted to delude himself into believing the contrary, he couldn’t.

Because he knew.

As much as it hurt, he knew who he was, he knew what others felt about him, he knew what others said about him.

Jongin was just an extra, unneeded and replaceable.

Then why, was he still here? Was it because he so wanted to believe that he belonged?

Was he scared?

Or was he just waiting for the right moment?

Maybe, it wasn’t any of those. Maybe he was still lost, still trying to find whether he should turn right or left or continue forward. Maybe he was still waiting for someone to find him, to tell him where to go, to tell him which road to take, to tell him that it was okay, that he belonged, that they needed him.

But waiting is hard. It’s like death in the form of slow poison filling his lungs as days and days crawl past. He waits and waits and waits, but all he can do is stare at the clock on the wall and count the hours and seconds, and nothing, nothing ever comes.

That someone isn’t there; they don’t exist.

Because no one needs him.

No one can tell him where to go, which road to take, because no one can tell him that it was okay and that he belonged.

Because he didn’t, and even liars find it hard to lie sometimes. When the lies burn from the ice, it’s hard to continue gripping onto it.

Maybe that was why he was standing on the windowsill, eleven fifty five at night.

His lies and delusions have finally slipped out of his hands, crashing onto the pavement a hundred feet below, shattering into a million different pieces, each reflecting a part of him that he despised.

As he falls, he closes his eyes, and for a moment, he could almost see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and him.