Kyungsoo felt a glare working its way onto his face, despite the pain it caused his black eye. “I thought that I knew about your life. I honestly did.” His hands curled into fists. “I thought I knew you. But it turns out that I never knew you at all.”

The adrenaline from his anger suddenly sloughed out of Jongin, replaced with a hot stone of guilt after he realized what Kyungsoo was saying. “Kyungsoo,” he murmured. “I’m...I’m sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“If you hadn’t lied to me, none of this would have happened in the first place!” he flung back. “I...I trusted you. I told you everything, I shared everything with you. But you lied. You’re not the person I thought you were.” Tears were glistening in Kyungsoo’s eyes now, brought there by the pain of Jongin’s betrayal.

“Kyungsoo!” Jongin shouted, his voice pleading now. “It...it isn’t like that!”

“No.” Kyungsoo took a step backwards, stepping out of the circle of the streetlamp’s dim light. Only Jongin remained there in the light. Raw. Exposed, his lies stripped away to reveal only him.

“I thought...I thought that I had finally found someone who...” Kyungsoo trailed off, a single tear falling from his eye to dribble down his cheek. But he swiped it away, his face going hard.

“Kyungsoo...hyung, no...” Jongin pleaded, realizing what was happening. “Please…” He reached out with gentle hands, the gentle hands he had only for him.

“No.” The word was repeated again; this time with more ferocity, more certainty, and Kyungsoo took another step away from Jongin, avoiding his hand. “No...I...you’ve done nothing but lie to me. I can’t…I can’t be with someone I don’t even know.”

“You can’t leave!” Jongin shouted, his words imbued with pain, anger, desperation. “How can you leave after everything? I...I did so much for you.”

“All you’ve done is lie to me. You’ve done nothing that’s worth me staying with you.”

Jongin felt all the air leave his chest, as if he was now taking the blows that Kyungsoo had taken. He realized now that Kyungsoo didn’t understand, couldn’t understand why Jongin had gone so far to lie to him. All he cared about was the fact that he’d lied at all. He didn’t understand the reasons why he had.

“Hyung!” Jongin yelled, his voice finally breaking. “Don’t go!” Anger, guilt, sadness, disappointment and pain were all mingled together in that broken voice.

Jongin opened his mouth to speak again, but the words that came were the words of his broken heart and wounded pride, not him himself. He wasn’t sure if he really meant them, but said them anyway.

“If you leave me now, you can never come back.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes snapped open and grew wide; staring at the younger man he had thought he loved. He wasn’t sure if Jongin had really meant the harsh words he had just said. Would Jongin really hold true to those words? After all the sweet moments they’d shared, after all the tender things whispered to each other against their skin just last night, could he really mean what he said?

But Kyungsoo realized with a jolt that while the Jongin he thought he knew would never have said those words, the real Jongin, the one he hardly knew at all, revealed to him tonight, could very well mean that he could never come back, that they would never ever be together again.

He tried to harden himself, to stop the flow of tears threatening to overtake him. It’s for the best that I leave, he told himself over and over again. But his heart beat so hard. It was as if it was trying to beat its way out of his chest to hold onto the man he had fallen for so easily.

Jongin recognized the look of certainty on Kyungsoo’s face. He knew that he had made up his mind. He wished he could have taken back the words. But part of him was glad he had said them. He wasn’t completely blameless in this! He wasn’t blameless in being angry at Kyungsoo for refusing to understand, for ignoring his rebuttals and defenses. In Kyungsoo’s mind, he would only be wrong for having lied. He could never understand the kind of things Jongin had done, and would have to do.

And from the beginning, part of him always knew that a man like Kyungsoo didn’t belong with a man like him, could never belong with a man like him. Kyungsoo had always deserved better. He would be the better for their parting. And he would be better off without him too. Kyungsoo had made him soft; he was losing focus and losing his ruthlessness that was the only thing enabling him to survive in this life. It was no wonder that Sehun and Jongdae had become suspicious of him. After falling in love, everything that was once stable in his old life had fallen apart. And after seeing Kyungsoo beaten up, he couldn’t let tonight replay itself, ever again. So he would let Kyungsoo go, and wouldn’t let him come back. It was for his own good. For both of them.

As Kyungsoo left, turning his back on Jongin, still standing in the light of the streetlamp, and as Jongin watched him go, both men knew in their hearts that they didn’t want to leave, that they didn’t want to be apart. But pride and desire for the other’s well-being got in the way of their honest love, making Kyungsoo go in one direction and Jongin the other.

Kyungsoo, once out of sight of Jongin, was so wrapped up in the pain and tears of betrayal and lost, thwarted love, that he didn’t hear or notice the car hurtling down the street towards him. Only when the headlights flashed into his face did he notice, and by then, it was too late.