⎛ Part One ⎠

After his mom died, his entire world shattered to a million pieces. He was a momma’s boy, always sticking by his mother’s side, and it wasn’t that he didn’t love his dad, but his dad really wasn’t anything like his mom. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t come to love his dad as much as he had loved his mother. Once his mom was gone, so was the rest of his love. But then his dad introduced his new girlfriend, a little over a few months after his mother had passed away. She had a son, and she was divorced. He didn’t like it, and he often got scolded by his father for being so hostile and cold towards his new girlfriend.

“Byun Baekhyun,  why can’t you just accept it!?” His father yelled at him one night after he told his father’s girlfriend to get out of the house after dinner, her then being so hurt by it that she just left, saying she had things to tend to. Baekhyun wasn’t ashamed of what he did, but his father was entirely pissed.

But then Baekhyun lost it, turning on his father. “What do you mean, ‘why can’t you just accept it’? Accept what? The fact that you’re replacing mom with some freak? The fact that you’re moving on so easily while your son is slowly drifting away from you and you can’t notice because you’re so caught up in your new girlfriend? The fact that you’re going to move on and not look back, not remember the love you and mom had, not respect the pain your son is in?”

It shocked his father to silence.

It shocked him to silence so much that Baekhyun didn’t know, a year later, that his father was getting remarried until the day of the marriage. He was so upset by this that he ran off, refusing to attend the wedding, locking himself in his room at home. Well, his shared room. He shared a room with his new stepmother’s son, Chanyeol.

“Baekhyun, open the door,” Came the call a few hours later, but it wasn’t his father. It also wasn’t his stepmom, and sadly enough, it wasn’t his mother either.

“Baekhyun...” Chanyeol whined and then went silent. The only sound that could be heard was the slight rattle of the doorknob, then suddenly the door was thrown open and there was Chanyeol, frowning and red faced, dressed in a nice suit that actually made him look much more mature in Baekhyun’s eyes.

“Get out!” Baekhyun hissed through clenched teeth, reaching up and grabbing whatever object touched his fingertips first. He whipped it across the room, and only when he heard the heart-wrenching sound of glass breaking on hardwood floor did he stop and think about what he did.

There, broken on the floor, was one of Chanyeol’s most prized possessions. It was a snow globe with Namsan Tower neatly arranged in the center, a wintery scene in the bubble that used to surround it. Glass spewed across the floor, water seeping into the wood, and Baekhyun gaped at the scene. Chanyeol slowly let his fingers drift from the doorknob, the expression on his face one of complete horror.

“Byun Baekhyun...” He started in just a whisper, his voice cracking on the third syllable of the sentence. “I can’t believe you did that.”

Despite the sudden storm that welled in him, Baekhyun put on a mask of indifference. “Yeah? Well I did it. Seeing is believing, right? Well, you saw it. So there you go. I did it,” And then in the heat of the moment, he stalked out of the room, knocking his shoulder into Chanyeol’s as he did so.

He left Chanyeol to clean up the mess, left Chanyeol to cry over the broken treasure, left his home to deal with the sudden storm named Byun Baekhyun.

⎛ On the other side...⎠

“Hyunwoo-ssi,” He called, giggling like a schoolgirl on his couch, a new bottle of whiskey emptied and laying on its side on the coffee table, blankets strewn over the back of the couch onto his half- body. “How many tears today? Oh, I collected many. Whose did you collect today, Hyunwoo-ssi? YOURS!”

Hyunwoo then promptly rolled off his couch, slamming his face into the floor as he fell face first. He broke into a cold sweat and a fit of giggles at the same time, pushing himself up off the floor. He had a lost puppy kind of look in his eyes, but they were also glazed over, as if he were in a trance. The only sound that startled him was the loud ringing of his doorbell, and after a few minutes to compose himself, Hyunwoo shuffled drunkenly to the door, opening it up.

There stood Byun Baekhyun, his cousin, his face drenched in tears. Hyunwoo ruffled his hair, groaning inwardly, and then opened the door farther, welcoming his cousin inside.

“Come to get drunk with the tear collector? He’ll collect your tears for the small price of...” Hyunwoo grabbed Baekhyun by the collar, his breath reeking of booze; his tone dropped a few octaves as a new, violent light flashed in his eyes. “You never speak of his state.”

Baekhyun nodded nervously, and once Hyunwoo set him free, he shut and locked the door. He then made his way to the wine cabinet, pulling out a tall glass for himself, then grabbing a bottle of wine. He may have been underage, but under the protection of his lovely cousin, he knew he was safe.

“Hyunwoo-ssi,” Hyunwoo hiccuped, giggling lightly as he held his glass to Baekhyun, grinning like a mad man as he was poured a glass of wine. “Looks like you’ll be collecting more tears.”

⎛ end ⎠