Rays of sunlight were poking through the remaining, almost dead leaves of the tree he stood under. He couldn’t help but look up, observing the sudden rarity that hit him right in the eyes. Sun indeed was strange thing, he decided; it gave life, yet if Earth’s orbit moved just by a tiny bit everything would gradually die either in unbearable heat or equally terrible cold.

Even with the sun being there for the first time after what had seemed like a millenium to him, his world was still unbelievably dark. Somehow though, he liked it that way.

He stood away from everyone, from all those pathetic bastards that dared to call themselves his friends and family. He almost found it amusing; to him, his family had always consisted of only one person and his friends were clever enough to figure out he’d want to be alone at such an occasion; which was also a reason why he couldn’t spot any of them there.

Sometimes he caught himself wondering whether the majority of the world’s population was as simple-minded as his personal experiences and media showed or if they all were just two-faced idiots. He didn’t know, though the latter was more likely as well as sadder than the first.

With a sigh, he wiped those useless thoughts away and leaned agaist the aforementioned tree, silently watching all those poeple looking for him. It was almost sickening to see how everyone wanted so desperately to hold his hand and tell him how sorry they were with fake tears in their eyes; it nearly made him feel nauseous. He couldn’t understand this strange tradition people kept. There were even people he had never seen before, people who had never seen him, yet they still wanted him to accept their condolences.

Hypocrites, he scoffed to himself, insignificant excuses for human beings.

“Having fun?” a voice came from beside him.

He chuckled. There was his family; the one and only person he’d ever called his family.

“I am.” he replied.

As he stole a glance at his brother, he couldn’t unnotice he’d made him slightly uncomfortable with his attitude. Sassing his brother had always been one of his hobbies, however a funeral maybe wasn’t a place to having fun. But it didn’t matter anymore, did it?

“I suppose you won’t go there.” his brother commented; he could still sense that bit of irony the elder put into his words.

“Do I have a reason to go there?” he asked, becoming serious. When only rustling of leaves in the wind answered him, he smirked in victory. “I don’t. And neither do you, hyung.” he added, glancing back at the people who still didn’t seem like going away anytime soon.

Even when being the younger, he had always felt a tiny bit smarter than his brother. They had always depended on each other as they grew from boys to men. He knew that his brother knew what he was thinking, or at least he thought so. They knew each other very well, it was almost bordering with the very well-known twin telepathy despite them not being twins at all.

“Look, Woohyun. I know what you still think of her, but it’s still our mother over there. And she’s dead.”

There it was. The ‘almost’ telepathy.

Woohyun didn’t even blink. “No, hyung. You just think you know what I think.”

“It’s time to forgive her, no?” the elder pressed on.

However, Woohyun was still perfectly calm.

“Don’t be like the rest.” he sighed. “Do you think that just because she’s dead I should forgive her? She never took care of us, we had to raise ourselves; there’s thousand of other things she’s done wrong, we’d be still standing here tomorrow if I started to list them now. And most importantly, you know what she caused, okay? I don’t care if you forgave her, I won’t.”

“What are you doing here then?” his brother hissed, regretting it right after.

 Woohyun chuckled. “Actually, you’re right. I’m going.” he stood straight once again and glanced at his watch before turning around to going away. “I’m expecting a call from Howon anyway.”

“Wait!” the elder called. Woohyun however kept on walking. “I don’t want to fight...” he muttered to himself then, watching his brother’s retreating figure slowly disappearing behind the trees.

Autumn had always been Woohyun’s favourite time of year. Somehow, he felt safe under the trees as he walked away. Their colourful, mostly fallen leaves appeared to him like perfect shields protecting him from everything that could possibly want to ruin his day.  What an irony.

As time went on, he had grown quite fond of the smell and sounds of everything dying. He had never felt anyhow out of place or anything similar; he had always assumed that people disliked autumn because of its cold and damp weather, because of its icy breeze that would seep through the fabric of their clothes and take away their warmth. He never understood other people.

To his own delight however, they didn’t understand him either.

Loosening his for such an occasion too tightly tied tie once he finally sat in the safety of his car, was more than liberating. As he drove away, he literally felt every burden disappearing. Away from all those people, from his brother, from her. However there still were his trains of thoughts that burdened him.

It happened often that he cursed his mind for thinking too much. Yet when we remember something we didn’t even want to think about in the first place, it won’t stop bugging our minds, will it?

“It is hard to explain in a letter why we’ve decided to end our lives; it is hard to put all the hardships we’ve been through to words. We may think that it’s better this way, that there is no purpose for us in this world anymore. There is no one to tell us otherwise.

Life is tiring. No one waits for us to return home, no one makes us dinner or wakes up next to us. We are all so very lonely, even in the crowd that surrounds us. And we wonder, why is everyone around us happy? Why it can’t be us in their place? We wonder why it was us whom miss Fortune turned her back on?

We wonder, why is there no one to read our last letter?

Sometimes, after we’re done watching the children grow up and we give them away to the world, we think that we have done what we were supposed to do. What’s left after that? We have no one to cook for anymore, no one to send to school anymore, no one to praise and scold anymore.

Only good old Death is waiting for us to pack our things. If we were staring Death right in the eyes, I think we would gladly give our lives away to be finally at peace.

Now the time has finally come. As I walk through the place I’ve spent my last years at, I wonder, did you forget about me? Do you still despise me? Do I even have the right to ask?

I gave you life, I gave you up… I killed the child in you.

As I walk through the place I’ve spent my last years at, I wonder, will you read my letter?”

He felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder as he read the letter their mother left them. Folding the paper back to its envelope, Woohyun couldn’t help but chuckle at how unhealthily ridiculous it all was. Even that envelope so didn’t go with the supposed atmosphere. It had a beautiful shade of blue; too beautiful for such a letter, he thought. Maybe though the colour of it was intentional; maybe it was supposed to lift off the sorrow the paper inside bore.

Woohyun hated blue.

Without sparing it another second, he threw the envelope back on the table before him and focused his attention on the man sitting across from him and his brother. Their family lawyer had always been a nice fellow; he unconsciously made it to Woohyun’s imaginary list of people he could stand. That day however, his list was completely blank. He didn’t even know why he felt like throwing bricks at everyone who spoke a word.

“According to your m