final;

He came back to Kyungsoo in a box with dusted corners.

Kyungsoo opened the front door to find Jongin standing there, still in his dancing outfit and box in arms. He didn’t miss the way the younger’s eyes flickered to the inside of his apartment. Over the shattered glass and debris and broken furniture.

But Kyungsoo didn’t care. It was no more than a reflection of himself.

“Here,” Jongin said, pushing the cardboard box in his arms towards him and not meeting the other’s eyes. “He wanted you to have this.”

Why didn’t he give it to me himself? Kyungsoo wanted to ask but didn’t. Because he already knew the reason.

So he just took it without a word and set it down by the door. But not before his fingers grazed the surface and heard the rustle of the contents inside.

With a nod, Jongin pulled up his dark gray hoodie and strode away.

Kyungsoo continued to stand there long after Jongin’s figure had faded into the twilight and when the night had settled like a blanket.

This was the time that Chanyeol would always come home, when the nighttime breeze began to whistle and stars began to stir. The older would always return, everything about him windswept except for the smile that stuck across those features. Kyungsoo would always scold him for not wearing enough and Chanyeol would just smile even wider, pressing a kiss to the younger’s lips. Then they would always somehow end up in the fortress of blankets together.

Now Kyungsoo looked up at the nighttime sky, but there were no stars.

A couple of days passed before Kyungsoo mustered enough courage to open the box. He blamed the lack of items in the apartment left to ruin rather than the nagging curiosity to know what it held.

It was lighter than he expected as if it held nothing but leaves inside. Nonetheless he gingerly carried it over the piles of class and shreds of fabric to only uncluttered spot in the living room and settled down beside it.

Using a pair of scissors that had its jaws buried in the couch behind him, Kyungsoo sliced the package open. His heart sank. There was a definite sense of anticlimax as he reached in and pulled out a handful of loose papers.

But something inside his chest fluttered when he noticed writing. He knew that scrawl anywhere. He started sorting the sheets, spreading them around him in patterns that only he would understand.

There were unnamed recipes, quotes, equations, and pieces obviously ripped from books. There were even a handful of blank pages and a couple of photos of seemingly random things. Kyungsoo didn’t know what connected them. And he bit his lip to stop the tears that slipped down his cheeks anyway because he would never know.

Jongin came to visit him later that afternoon. He picked his way through the disarray and sat down beside Kyungsoo, offering nothing but his presence and his dark eyes taking it all in – the scattered pages and intent and overly-bright eyes.

And he was there when Kyungsoo discovered the stack of stapled pages.

“I-it’s a journal,” the older breathed.

Jongin nodded.

But as Kyungsoo flipped through March sixth seventh eighth… he noticed something. “It… it’s missing pages.”

“Really?” A rustle of Jongin’s clothes.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo said, leaning back but gaze not wavering. “There are pages missing between March twenty-ninth… and April first… And here… and…” He stopped. Without warning, his throat closed up and a shiver shot through his body. Tears slipped down his cheek.

Jongin didn’t dare speak or even to breathe and just watched the older wipe the droplets away.

Looking up, Kyungsoo met those hooded eyes and whispered, “What does this all mean, Jongin?”

Teeth bit into full lips before… “Maybe…” Jongin said, slowly, deliberately, “he meant to give you everything that he could never give you—”

The rest of his sentence was cut off by the sound of papers being flung away. The storm of ink-tinted white descended around them. Biting back tears until red bled onto his tongue, Kyungsoo watched them fall around the room. Around the apartment that had once felt so comforting and safe. But now it seemed too empty to fill, too cold to warm, too broken to fix.

“I…I’ve heard…” Jongin spoke up after a moment. “I’ve heard that it helps to write all the reasons why you’re angry at them… it’s supposed to, you know…” his voice trailed off.

Still Kyungsoo didn’t respond.

“Chanyeol…” But his words faded out when Kyungsoo’s dulled eyes turned up towards him.

“He…” the younger tried again, “he would’ve wanted you to be happy…”

Seeing the defeated look in those doe-eyes, Jongin sighed and stood up. He pulled some blank sheets from the box and, producing a pen from his pocket, placed the instrument in the older’s hand. His warmth of his touch contrasted just as drastically as their different skin tones. Then he turned and left without a word.

The sound of the front door closing brought Kyungsoo from his daze.

Numbly turning to the blank canvas before him, something inside Kyungsoo throbbed. The void inside of him begged him to be filled. There was nothing else he could do. So he did the only thing that came more naturally to him than breathing.

He began to write.

It started off easy.

1.       I hate you

2.       I hate you for leaving

3.       I hate you for leaving me behind

But it got harder and harder as he continued. It frustrated Kyungsoo to no end because he could never seem to find the right words. He felt like he was stuck in a dense fog, blindly reaching out to catch the last of his sanity.

Numbers fourteen through twenty-one annoyed him the most because they weren’t even things he hated.

17.   I hate the way you stumble over tall- body and too many limbs.

18.   I hate the way you overindulge in alcohol because ‘Hey, life is short and I am in love.’

But he kept going anyway.

Somewhere between numbers thirty-seven and forty, Jongin returned, this time with groceries.

This was a marginally long amount of time as each accusation Kyungsoo wrote down seemed to take longer and longer when all the obvious ones had been eliminated. It must’ve been more than a day because Kyungsoo felt the pitying brush of Jongin’s hand against his cheek.

39.  I hate how you are never able to keep your promises because you are always trying to find another way to go above and beyond.

The pen clattered onto the table and rolled into a fissure. Kyungsoo didn’t remember whether he had made those with the knife or the screwdriver.

“Forty-two is a good number,” Jongin said from behind him casually.

“But I can’t write anymore…” Kyungsoo said, running a hand through his short hair. He thought he had exhausted a life time of emotions when he tore the place apart, but it seemed as they kept coming back.

“Try” was the simple response.

Kyungsoo bit his lip again.

“How about something that you disagreed on,” Jongin offered. “Something you believed and he didn’t.”

That was it. Kyungsoo barely managed to write it out before a sob rose in his chest.

40.      I hate how you know that I never believe in “moved on,” that moving on is a life-long process with no end point, and that you will never erase someone from your life completely.

Droplets splattered the page and the ink began to run like dirt from a rain-washed window.

/RING RING/ CLICK!

…Hello?

Chanyeol? Thank goodness you finally picked up. I just got back and you weren’t home. I was worried. Where have you been?

I-uh..I’ve been busy… with work. I’m going on a… uh… business trip…

Oh. A pause. Well, be safe. Make sure to dress warmly. I’ll be waiting at home—

Kyungsoo

Yes?

I’m not coming home

Jongin caught Kyungsoo in time. Just as the older finished writing the second-to-last one with quaking hands, he fell back and collapsed into the younger dancer’s arms.

Kyungsoo cried. He cried like he had never before, drawing the tears from the well that he had thought he had already dried. He cried for the paradise lost to them.

And it was tragically quiet. Only dry sobs, whimpers and sparse tears.

41.      I hate how you left me for him

“But why?” Kyungsoo sobbed into Jongin’s chest. “Why did he leave? Those pages…” Before the younger could stop him, he broke from Jongin’s hold and started searching around frantically. He didn’t care that he was ripping some of them. “Those missing pages… they must have it… the reason… real reason—”

“But you already know.”

You should write more

But I have you

A long while passed. What do you believe in?

I believe that there’s no such thing as “moved on.” You will always be moving on. There’s no endpoint. Wide eyes glanced up. What about you?

Long limbs shift. I believe that it’s possible to love someone too much and…that sometimes it’s best to just leave before you hurt them anymore.

“Maybe he didn’t want you to know.”

Even though Jongin’s voice was deep and barely above a whisper, Kyungsoo heard every word.

Kyungsoo whipped around. For the first time, Jongin didn’t back away. 

“Maybe it was meant to be this way, you not knowing,” he said, daring to step forward and taking his hyung’s hand in his. “He always talked about how he wanted you to write again.”

Kyungsoo glanced away, but didn’t withdraw his hand. This pushed Jongin further.

“He doesn’t love Baekhyun,” he pursued.

“How do you know?”

“He doesn’t look at him the same way.”

Doe eyes met dark ones and immediately the older felt a jolt. He knew that look, knew it in his bones and in his existence.

Suddenly Jongin’s face blurred as tears welled up in Kyungsoo’s vision. A warm hand brushed Kyungsoo’s cheek and he instinctively leaned into the touch. Then lips brushed by his ear as Jongin held him close. His words were a spring wind against Kyungsoo’s ear.

“You should smile again because he can’t anymore.”

“Hey you missed one.”

Kyungsoo glanced over his shoulder, scissors between his teeth and his hands pausing in its repairing of the window. Jongin stepped forward and handed him a simple envelope.

“It fell under the couch.”

Setting the instrument down, Kyungsoo flipped the said object over. The inscription was simple:

To be opened when Soo has moved on

There was a very heavy silence.

“There’s… enough…” Kyungsoo murmured.

“What?”

Kyungsoo met Jongin’s eyes. “There’s enough pages. It must be the missing pages.”

He stared at it. His finger brushed the flap, starting to lift it… This was it. This was the answer to everything, to all his problems. He would know everything… and everything would be okay… and he would be okay… but…

He stopped. But, he thought, would he?

Jongin’s eyes widened in shock as Kyungsoo turned and pulled open the cardboard box that had been almost forgotten. And he dropped the envelope inside.

“Will you be all right?”

Kyungsoo didn’t respond – verbally at least. Instead he went to the list still sitting on the table, picked up the pen and scribbled one last line.

“You’re right, Jongin,” Kyungsoo said, folding the page and sticking it into the box as well. Then he took Jongin’s hand, lacing his thin fingers through the latter’s.

Jongin’s heart skipped a beat when a slow and shy smile spread across Kyungsoo’s lips. It fit so perfectly that it left no doubt in the younger’s mind that it was always meant to be there on his hyung’s features. Indeed, sadness didn’t suit him.

“Forty-two is a good number.”

42.      I hate how I still love you. And always will

The apartment was clean again.

It had taken four months, but he had done it. With Jongin’s help, of course.

“Kyungsoo! Let’s go! You’re gonna be late to the interview.”

“Yeah! Hold on!” He called back. He was on his hands and knees, groping around the closet. “Dammit, where were those—?”

Then his fingers brushed it. There was only a brief moment of hesitation before Kyungsoo pulled it out.

The box was exactly the same as when he first got it – slightly dusted around the corners and made leaf-like sounds. He hadn’t sealed it yet so he tentatively reached inside and pulled out the envelope.

To be opened when Soo has moved on

Had he moved on? No, he never believed it could ever happen. But the difference now was that he could try.

Closing his eyes, Kyungsoo pressed his lip to the envelope before dropping it into the box. Then he sealed the lid with three layers of duct tape. A sense of closure enfolded him as he nudged it back into the closet, wedged between other boxes.

Standing up and walking to the door, Kyungsoo paused for a heartbeat with his hand on the doorknob and glanced back. He thought of all the things that had happened and found that he didn’t regret a thing. He smiled. It was a gentle expression meant only for Chanyeol.

“I’m going now,” he whispered before closing the door behind him.

He may never believe in “moved on”, but he could believe in “moving on.” Just keep moving…

And going…

And going on…

And Kyungsoo would never know that, inside the sealed envelope, the missing pages were blank.

They had nothing written on them at all.

A/N:

And that's it for Kyungsoo's part, the one that started it all OuO

Thank you so much to the people that subbed and upvoted on the original~ EIGHT!? I CAN'T EVEN Next up is Chanyeol's side then Baekhyun's! Get ready for the cluster that is this series.

Laterzz~