Chapter VII

“A great fire burns within me,

but no one stops to warm themselves at it,

and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”

Vincent Van Gogh

He did not want to return home yet. His two hands clutched around the wheel, the distant sounds of Seoul and an air of wretchedness fueling his lungs were what the night had to offer to Seunghyun. Time had passed since he last wandered around those familiar streets, but the thought of his conversation with Daesung had welled up forgotten memories, hence he was now strolling down Seoul in search of the recipients of those.

The first one to appear was the house #302 in Itaewon with its reddish-cranked fence; it was his first home and family, now almost derelict. It was followed by the one inside Gangseo suburbs with its spiral staircase and decayed chimney that used to smoke every single room during Christmas, his second home. He continued driving aimlessly down the streets until he reached the Mapo building were his third family had lived in a rented apartment, merely three months he had stayed there until he was transferred to his fourth family in Seongbuk were he sojourned only for one year. The last house he drove to that night was, too, the last one he had lived with an adoptive family before he ran away from the childhood services. The house still remained stunning with white pearl walls and palatial style gardens, inside Gangnam district.

Seunghyun stared in the distance at each and every one of those houses, slowing down the speed of the car and his own thinking. His eyes locked onto those buildings with dryness, as though he was trying strenuously to remember something apart from the little malfunctions and peculiarities of their structures; but no faces came back to his mind.

Carrying his frustration he returned home or the place he called home now, where he was now living in, the one who strangely retained only images of a single face, the one of Jiyong’s peacefulness. Night was washing over every corner and when he noticed it, became surprised of how fast the day had passed by.

When he arrived to the neighborhood only a dreary calmness mixed with dim lights welcomed him. In front of the house was parked Jiyong’s car, and Seunghyun’s heart jumped in nervousness as if conditioned to do so. He went out into the night and walked slowly across the street, looking at the white car with the same intensity as if he was staring at Jiyong.

“What’s with you? Huh?” he asked to the air and to the white car, raising a sad smile on his lips. “Me? No good things actually,” he answered to an inexistent question whilst caressing the metal surface of the hood. “Want to know something ridiculous? I was trying to discover myself today. Funny… I know. Myself,” he sneered in self-hatred but a sudden idea crept into his mind and words escaped from his lips as whispers.

“For you, you know? I wanted you to see me…” But those words faded into the emptiness and never reached the ears to whom they were aimed to.

Jiyong had arrived to the house hours before, with sallow skin and a sickened heart of listening all day to the shareholders grievances about the future of CHOI Company and his own ineptitude. His feet had found the way to the canteen by their own and his lips and hands had drank much more than what they were supposed to. Now his body was collapsed over the living room’s rug, his back resting against the sofa and his knees pulled up towards his chest. But that hadn’t been enough to erase the sickening feeling inside his core. His almond eyes looked around the darkened room, reddened and teary until stopping at the view of those portraits over the wall, which were the only thing slightly lightened by the feebly beams of lights seeping around the corners of the drawn curtains.

 Jiyong swallowed hard and blinked his eyes rapidly as if trying to make those pictures disappear. A nauseous feeling seized him when he saw those painted eyes staring at him mockingly.

“No way! Absolutely not! Those things will not enter into my room!” shouted Jiyong outstretching his arms, covering their bedroom’s door in an attempt to prevent his boyfriend to enter inside. The latter one only looked at him sternly and arched a sly eyebrow.

“Move, Jiyong. Have you any idea what are you calling a “thing”? They are original Lichtensteins, so move now,” he said calmly and tried to slip inside the room but was pushed out before he could make one step.

“Lichensein or whatever, I said no! Not inside my room!” Jiyong replied angrily, pushing Seunghyun farther away from the door.

“May I say it's not your room but ours?” asked the unwanted one carrying between his hands the portraits enveloped in plastic, but after looking at Jiyong’s slammed shut eyes he backed away and gave up, “Why?”

“I don’t want one of those eyes staring at me while I sleep. It’s creepy…” confessed Jiyong with his forehead puckered in discontent, and slammed the door close, ending their argument.

“You did not insult a Lichtenstein, right Jiyong? Did I hear creepy or was I imagining things?” Jiyong listened at his boyfriend ranting at the other side of the door but he was equally as stubborn, and those portraits would remain outside his room.

A wood frame cracked against the floor, particles of glass jumped and scattered around Jiyong’s feet. The sound of broken things stirred the night and the darkness when, one by one, Jiyong pulled off those portraits from the walls and smashed them with fury onto the ground. Madness invaded his soul and madness invaded the room.

Sobs and reined up cries joined the sound of broken glass and smashed memories. He was tired of seeing Choi Seunghyun at every corner, tired of waiting for his face to fade away, tired of the presence that was still there accompanying him with cruelty.

With hands stained red, he collapsed over the floor; fragments of glass pierced the skin of his knees and palms, but the gloom inside his head acted as anesthesia, numbing his body.

“Look at what I did! I broke them!” he screamed in despair into the nothingness, his eyes moving side-to-side expecting a shadow to emerge, pleading for that deep voice to talk.

“Won’t you say anything? Aren’t you mad?! Come... Say something!” he kept howling, his hands clenched tight onto his chest staining it with his own blood. But despite his screams, Choi Seunghyun did not say anything.

Seconds later Seunghyun entered into the house and blinked at the obscurity in confusion, but his gestures changed into concern the moment he felt something cracking under the soles of his shoes. In that precise moment he recognized the broken pictures scattered and a shaky figure shrunken over the floor. He ran without second thoughts.

“What happened? Are you ok?” he asked furiously, running his hands through Jiyong’s body, finding the scratches in his hands and the stains of blood in his chest. He gasped and grabbed those hands while inspecting the seriousness of the wounds.

Jiyong lifted his head and stared absently at him, his eyes were burning in desperation. Slowly he drew a crooked smile over his lips.

“So you came? Can you see? I broke them,” he said and laughed, with a sound bordering in craziness.

Seunghyun sighed in pain when every piece made sense and he understood the frightening vision inside the room. Pangs of frustration crossed his chest when Jiyong raised that maniac smile on his face. NO, he thought and rudely encircled Jiyong with his arms as if trying to save the purity and sanity of the one in front of him, as if seeking to rescue the innocence he knew was buried by pain inside Jiyong’s mind. NO, he cried over and over again while embracing Jiyong with all his strength.

You are much better than this, he repeated inside his mind like a mantra, the intensity of his feelings stunned even himself.

“Stop,” he pleaded grabbing Jiyong’s face between his palms, “Don’t hurt yourself anymore… you don’t deserve this,” he said with his voice strained, lips buried in Jiyong’s dark hair.

But his body was automatically pushed away with force over the floor. When he lifted his eyes, Jiyong did no longer looked at him with desperation but pure hatred.

“Don’t dare to say what I deserve! Don’t dare to touch me when you are not asked!” he growled and Seunghyun’s eyes widened with terror and his body stiffened in total confusion. “Who are you to say? Nothing but a supplanter! you!” Jiyong shouted and, in a fast move, he took a piece of glass from the floor and threw it to Seunghyun.

Even though Seunghyun reflexes where fast and was able to cover his face with his forearm, the glass cut few inches under his right eye making him writhe in pain. His hands draped his face where a red fluid had started running over his cheek.

“It doesn’t hurt as it hurts in here,” Jiyong declared standing up from the floor while hitting his chest with his fist and stared at Seunghyun coldly before getting out of the house with rushed steps.

Seungyun stared at his own hands now tarnished with his blood, the feeling of being wounded less than frightening him, filled him with ease. He heard his heart cracking and that gave him certainty of having one. Jiyong had hurt him, Lee Seunghyun, the one he still did not know but felt in that precise instant real, alive and bleeding.

He raised himself up and walked to the bathroom, were he washed his wound and searched for an bandaid to cover it. That wound will surely require stitches but his worry for Jiyong was stronger; he had seen those wounds over his hands and he had smelled alcohol in his breath. And he swore he had heard Jiyong’s car driving away.

He rushed out of the house and got into his own car. The pain under his eye was almost blinding but he still drove into the darkness of the city in search of Jiyong’s white car and the person inside it.

Many thoughts and emotions came to his mind but one overawed him: fear of losing something. Something that wasn’t even his and still, the thought of it seemed frightfully for him.

After two hours of roaming through the street and boulevards, he sighted a white spot parked at the side when he drove over Banpo’s bridge. His heart and thoughts rose in fury, blinding him with intense feelings he no longer could name. Terrified he was, when he saw the door opened and its owner not in sight.

He went out of the car and ran as fast as he could, without looking at the cold water under the bridge and them. Not willing to accept that possibility.

“Don’t ing do this Jiyong,” he screamed for himself. “Please tell me you didn’t,” he pleaded while he ran, fear running over his back. “Please don’t… “

… don’t leave me. He could not finish.

Seunghyun had heard before about that kind of pain but never had felt it, now it was there like a shadow following his steps, buzzing into his ears. There was nothing, not the lights of the cars dodging his running figure on the street, not the sound of the water running savagely under his feet; only fear. Maybe, he thought, just once he knew that kind of fear and that had been a time when he promised himself never to felt it again.

He studied with his eyes his surroundings, expecting to see Jiyong’s beige coat somewhere close but when he found it thrown and dirty over the pavement, he panted in terror.

“Jiyong!” he shouted and quivered.

Just then he saw him, cuddled against the wall of the bridge. His mournful silhouette was meters away from him, embracing his own knees and his back quivering in cold. And amid the disaster and grave, Seunghyun smiled in happiness and felt his body suspended in the air. He was captured by relief and for the first time he appreciated life, the life of another human being.

He walked towards Jiyong and placed his own dark coat over Jiyong’s shoulders with tenderness. He sat beside him in silence. His soul was in such a state that he found no pleasure in complaints or quarrels but in standing just there by his side.

Jiyong raised his eyes and looked at him with shame.

“I couldn’t,” he confessed.

Seunghyun could see all his emotions flaring up from his eyes and cherished it, for he saw Jiyong’s sanity was still there and that innocence he contemplated that morning still remained there as beautiful. Jiyong’s eyes stopped over Seunghyun’s wound and bit his lips in sign of remorse.

“Why are you still here? Why are you not going?” he asked in a murmur.

“Where am I supposed to go?” Seunghyun asked and looked puzzled at Jiyong.

“I don’t know. Somewhere…. away from me. I don’t know. I’m broken,”

“I’m not going to judge you, Jiyong. Judgment broke you in the first place,”

To this Jiyong stared at the supplanter, for the first time at the one who was and not at the one who was not. And Seunghyun felt his skin flaming under the crude gaze of those almond eyes.

“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand… I can’t. Why did you end up doing this?”

Seunghyun sighed and ran a hand over his hair, searching for a way to say those things. Searching for a way to open his past.

“I was born with no parents,” he said at last and saw Jiyong’s eyes widened in surprise for the sudden outburst of trust and truths. “My mom died when I was born, my father ran away. I’ve been an orphan since then.”

Seunghyun breathed in the fresh air and the cold breeze of the water under them and continued, for he felt opening himself was the best decision he could make.

“I was given for adoption to many families but… Isn’t it funny? All of them wanted things I was not. All of them wanted a son I was not. And when they realized that truth they gave me back… Yes, I never found a family and so I ran away… Don’t look at me like that. I thought -Well, I don’t want this anymore- and ran.”

Jiyong listened at him intently and engulfed in deep silence. His face and body seemed to have relaxed and forget its own pain at the sight of the torture inside Seunghyun’s life.

“And then I met Daesung. You remember? The one who came with me the first day…”

“I do.”

“Well, him. And in spite of my effort to search for a job, I ended up in here. I guess I was destined to this life,” he said and smiled half-heartedly.

“And Daesung?” asked Jiyong

“He followed me. I don’t know. He keeps following me, even if he hates what I do. I guess he just don’t see himself anywhere but with me. I myself can’t.”

“Do you like it?” asked Jiyong cautiously.

Seunghyun did not answer instantly but tighten his lips and stared at the distance for a moment.

“It's not about liking. The more you hate it, the best you can do it,” said Seunghyun finally without looking into Jiyong’s eyes.

“Don’t you feel lonely?”

“I used to, I got accustomed to. Loneliness… well, what can I say? It's like rain, or sun, it is there but no longer catches your attention. You feel it, but sometimes you no longer can recognize it,”

“I can’t,” say Jiyong to that and squeezed his legs tightly. “I can’t be lonely.”

“Who can?” said Seunghyun with sincerity.

“I don’t like what I see when I’m alone.”

“And what’s that?” he asked, but was almost sure of the answer, for he knew it too but wasn’t as brave to say it out loud.

“My own demons. My wounds. My fears. They scare me. I can’t be alone,” cried Jiyong and looked at his hands and its scratches. There was nostalgia in his voice.

“Is that why I’m here?” asked the supplanter. But Jiyong shrugged his shoulders in an ambiguous answer.

“I don’t know why you are here. I just need you,” he answered and looked away, “There’s pain when you are here and I need it. It makes me feel less dirty.”

“Dirty? Of what?”

“Guilt,” he declared and looked again into his eyes deeply. “I deserve it. I did wrong things.” He confessed whilst hitting his chest with his fist. Seunghyun rushed and grabbed that hand, softening it until it was extended again with caresses and placed it between his own hands with tenderness. Jiyong only stared at him in silence.

“You don’t deserve pain.”

“I do. I did wrong.”

Seunghyun shook his head in resolution and smiled at him with softness he did not know he even had.

“No, you are not.”

“You are wrong, you don’t know me,” argued Jiyong, his eyes flaring in frustration.

“I know you enough. You are not.”

“Why?” finally Jiyong gave up and burst into slow tears, softened by the overwhelming tenderness in Seunghyun’s eyes. “Why can you say that?”

“I have known many men in my life. Evil, twisted minds. But I know and I have seen no remorse in those. I know and believe, the kind of struggle, the kind of suffering emanating from you, can only come from a noble heart in pain.”

Jiyong cried in silence and searched for the closeness of the supplanter. He cuddled between his arms, confusion and reality mixing inside his mind. And a question arose from his lips unconsciously.

“Will you stay?”

And Seunghyun understood what that question meant. Jiyong was far from healed. And the supplanter was conscious it would require his own soul, his own fragments, and his own sanity to help the man between his arms. And probably his own suffering… but his arms tightened around Jiyong’s body and he nodded in silence.

“As long as you need me,” he promised and looked into Jiyong’s eyes. “I’ll be here, as long as you want me here.”

“I’m going to hurt you,” Jiyong said, fear forming inside his pupils.

“I know.”

“I’m going to use you.”

“I know.”

“Will you stay?”

“Yes.”

Hi new update for you! ^.^  I hope this story is still interesting for you. I know it's going slow but it has to be this way, though I'm doing my best to fasten up a bit. Things will start to make sense, secrets will surface. ^.^

Please do leave some comments. ^.^ 

Thank you to: annaloveriri & Burning91Rose for subscribing. And to: Purplegum, ross_i, forheaven & Burning91Rose for the upvote! ^.^

Soundtrack for this chapter (Songs I heard while writing this one)

-Coldplay - Us Against The World

-Coldplay- Gravity

-Evanescene - Lost in Paradise

See ya soon!!