Jinki looked intently at the muscly man at the port, the rusty fish bucket pressing hard against his shoulder, blue marlin fish b up the lid, the water constantly spilling and wetting the man’s chest.

“He really is strong.” Jinki thought to himself as he ticked the check box on his list of “Fish Supply for Today”. As the owner of Fish Port, he has been here everyday, and so is the “strong” man that he’s been looking at for the few past weeks; if it’s either out of interest or pure curiosity, Jinki will never know.

 

“Sir, I delivered everything thus far.” His soft voice never matched his buff muscles, a puppy’s vocal chords in a cow’s body.

 

“What was your name again?”

 

“Kim Jonghyun, Sir.”

 

“What do you do to be strong like that?”

 

“Be void of feeling, that’s how.” And the man left the fish port owner in utter shock; the shock progressed to confusion and later turned into the determination to change Mr. Kim’s definition of strong.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

“Sir, I’m sorry, but please refrain from sending me anything. I don’t want your pity.” The return note read in big, squiggly handwritten print. Three months after their first conversation, Jinki has been attempting to stuff his worker’s house with cans of sardines and refrigerators after he overheard the gossiping fish vendors about how Jonghyun’s mother met death from drowning, with her head on the fish bucket, and his alcoholic father’s hand on his mother’s nape.

 

Jinki scratched his head, his perseverance beginning to wan from the intensity of the rejection of the supposed-to-be-friendship that he tries to offer every day. The worker stood strong to his ideals up until the owner decided to woo his cold stone heart by actually using words. Not a day passed when the worker didn’t receive hot coffee from his boss’ cupboard. While on the process, he sat on the dim-lighted office, mouth tightly plastered with his own reveries, for about an hour per day to listen to the endless rambles of the man who never seem to frown.

Jonghyun finally saw the stark contrast between them, after months of the same routine that he’s actually starting to enjoy but deny to admit. Though there were obvious similarities, such as being both orphans (Jinki never saw his parents again after they left him in the fish port when he was 10 years old; the old local geezer graphically described his parents as fully-tattooed “crack heads”, blabbering about how they hated to have a boy who looked like a doll, how they wanted him to look badass so he’d inherit their so called “business”), Jonghyun and Jinki lived a fairly opposite life. While he was busy clearing his emotions as the calendars pile up, his boss embraced what he had left; nurtured it and radiate it to the people around him. He never understood how and why Jinki did that. It’s disgusting how much he pretended to be okay, to be happy although he has no reason to, to make himself believe that hate isn’t true.

 

“What a sick idealist.” Jonghyun once thought. It never occurred to him that the sick idealist carries the one sentence hammer that would break his barriers for as long as he lives.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

“If you can’t get a miracle, become one.*”

 

“How can I be a miracle when I don’t even recognize love?” Jonghyun answered back for the first time in five months.

 

“Knowing love is a choice. There’s a thin line between love and hate, Jonghyun, I know it confuses you. But like hate, once you cultivate love, it will be all over the world in no time. Don’t be selfish to yourself, don’t be selfish to the world.”

 

Jonghyun broke down, right then and there. Loud, lonely and helpless sobs finally escaped his mouth, after all these years of not shedding a tear following his mother’s death and his father’s admittance to the loony bin. He knew, all along, that he wanted to love his parents so bad, to the point where he succeeded. He succeeded but he was in denial; his want to love became parallel to his want to hate. He detested and gave affection at the same time; the contrasting emotions wrapped his heart with a cold hand, injuring it, eating it, hollowing his soul. In time, he went out and basked in the darker light, letting it lead, shadowing the feelings that he thought he never had.

 

Jonghyun, for the first time in his life, acknowledged all the emotions he tried to supress and they come running to him all at once; like a waterfall, like a tidal wave,  like a thousand spears into his heart, and he was surprisingly relieved. At long last, he gained freedom from himself, something that he wasn’t aware he needed. He was indeed human. He wasn’t strong. If not for Onew, he would’ve destroyed himself.

 

Jinki stood up from his boss chair’, pulled Jonghyun’s hand and together they ran to the shore, where the waves are calm and the sun tinting the whole of the sky, orange.

 

“Ahhhh!!” A piercing shout from Jonghyun didn’t even shock his boss. Instead, the latter matched the story-telling screams from the former.

 

“Umma!! Appa!! Ummaaaaa!! Appaaaaaa!!” Jonghyun is now on his knees, unable to handle his outbursts himself, gasping for air in between sobs. A pair of arms wrapped around him, making him swallow an upcoming surge of emotions, he never thought human touch would feel so unfamiliar after a long time.

 

“Don’t hold back. We’re not that different, I was as afraid as you. You’re not alone.” Jinki whispered, his voice cracking at the end of the last word. And with that, Jonghyun was reborn; he is strong because he chooses to be vulnerable.

 

Kim Jonghyun promised to himself, as his savior’s weeps become synchronous with his, that he would never let go of the opportunity to love, ever again.